The 2021/22 Menzies Screening Series continues with Record, a deeply personal documentary film essay from UK-based Australian artist filmmaker Joanna Callaghan, who will join us after the film for a live Q&A.

A film about holding on, and letting go, Record asks how we make sense of the past through what we record and keep, what we make and share. Framed by a road trip through Australia, and tracing Callaghan's own journey/s within and between Australia and the UK, the film weaves personal history with wider stories of colonisation, migration and the role of geography in identity. Callaghan uses a diverse range of recorded media - including family photos, home movies and extracts from her own films and photography - to explore her relationship with the country, her family and her own creative life. Shaped by this rich archive, Record builds to reveal a lifetime’s journey.

This online screening is free and open to all (including audiences outside the UK), and will take place live and online via Eventive. It will be followed by a live Q&A with the film's director, Joanna Callaghan, chaired by Menzies Screenings curator, Stephen Morgan. If you miss the live session, there will also be an opportunity to watch the film and recorded Q&A for 14 days after the event.

Please note: this film contains scenes of childbirth that some viewers may find graphic.

ABOUT THE SPEAKERS:

Joanna Callaghan is an artist filmmaker and Professor of Filmmaking at the University of Sussex. Her work explores philosophical ideas, often mixing fiction and documentary to present stories that reflect the diversity and complexity of women’s experiences. Her films include first person film Record (2020) and Love in the Post: From Plato to Derrida (2014), a hybrid feature based on a book by Jacques Derrida. Her films have been shown in cinemas and galleries including the Australia Centre for the Moving Image, HOME Manchester, Watershed Bristol, Whitechapel Gallery and Somerset House and in festivals such as Brighton Cine-City Festival and Exis Experimental Film Festival Seoul. In 2007 she established Heraclitus Pictures dedicated to supporting artist films and exhibitions.

Stephen Morgan is a film programmer and academic whose research focuses on the cultural history of British and Australian cinema and the broader intersections of Empire and nation within settler and Indigenous cinemas. As well as serving as the Screenings Coordinator for the Menzies Australia Institute, he is the Co-Programmer of the London Australian Film Society & Festival.