Are you a Welsh or Wales-based woman or non-binary filmmaker with one or more unfinished projects stored on your computer, hidden in a desk drawer, or languishing in development hell?
We want to give you the opportunity to share and reflect on your incomplete or unrealised work at a special event at Chapter Arts Centre, Cardiff, this summer. We can support three filmmakers (or TV practitioners) to produce and deliver lecture–performances reconstituting materials from their past unfinished projects.
This project is inspired by Alix Beeston and Stefan Solomon’s book Incomplete: The Feminist Possibilities of the Unfinished Film, which reimagines women’s incomplete works as essential to film history. It’s also inspired by Laura Conway’s funny and moving lecture–performance Lass that Has Gone, delivered at Denver Art Museum last year, along with recent films about unfinished films such as Zia Anger’s My First Film (2024) and Sandi Tan’s Shirkers (2018).
Project Details
The project team, Dr Alix Beeston and Dr Meena Saverimuttu, have secured funding from Cardiff University/UKRI to commission three lecture–performances, each of 30–40 minutes duration, to be presented at a free, public event at Chapter’s Cinema 2 in late August 2025.
The performances will be developed by the chosen filmmakers from May–August 2025. The filmmakers will have autonomy in determining the schedule and process for developing these works, as well as their final content and shape. They will be required to attend two interactive, in-person workshops with the project team at Cardiff University, for which there will be a small amount of preparatory reading and/or viewing, and which will include the sharing of their in-progress work.
The filmmakers must also make themselves available to complete (brief!) surveys or virtual interviews at the beginning, middle, and end of the project.
Project Aims
The project has three key aims.
First, we want to encourage filmmakers and other arts practitioners in Wales to cultivate more reflective and less self-stigmatising attitudes toward the unfinished, moving beyond its associations with shame and failure.
Second, we hope that the lecture–performances will increase awareness of the conditions by which films don’t get made in Wales – including the effects of structural discrimination in terms of gender, race, and class – among public audiences and industry professionals. Our larger aim is to see greater equity and new pathways in film development for women and other minoritised people.
Third, we want to generate new appreciations among artists and audiences of the potential of unfinished projects, which may lead to further creative reworking and programming of incomplete works in Wales (and beyond).
What We Can Offer
Each of the three selected filmmakers will receive an £800 fee for the development of their lecture–performance, delivered in two instalments in June and July, and a further £400 speaker’s fee following the event at Chapter.
These flat rates cover the costs of creative labour and materials associated with developing the performances, as well as participation in the workshops and surveys/interviews. The filmmakers will have discretion in the funds’ use and will retain intellectual property for their created works.
The project will also fund catering for the activities and offset the cost of the filmmakers’ travel to and from the workshops and public event (within South Wales).
Expressions of Interest
Want in? All we need is a super-short EoI before 14 February 2025. Email beestona@cardiff.ac.uk a statement of no more than 150 words indicating the nature of your unfinished project(s) and why you’re interested in participating in the project. Please also send a short bio to give us a sense of your filmmaking experience to date.
EoIs will be assessed by the project team, in consultation with Claire Vaughan (Cinema Programme Manager, Chapter). All applicants will be advised of the outcome by the end of February.
As long as you have at least some film experience, you’re based in or from Wales, and you identify as a woman or as non-binary, you’re welcome to apply. We can’t wait to hear from you!
Contacts
Dr Alix Beeston (beestona@cardiff.ac.uk)
Dr Meenaatchi (Meena) Saverimuttu (saverimuttum@cardiff.ac.uk)
This initiative is presented by Image Works: Research and Practice in Visual Culture, with support from Cardiff University’s UKRI Harmonised Impact Acceleration Account (IAA) Strategic Impact Fund.
