The School of the Arts, Media, Performance & Design (AMPD) at York University will honour one of its own during the inaugural AMPD Research Celebration on Feb. 14.
Cinema & Media Arts Professor Brenda Longfellow will be presented with the AMPD Research Award in recognition of her outstanding work.
An accomplished documentary filmmaker, Longfellow’s films have been screened and broadcast internationally. She recently launched the interactive web documentary Offshore, funded by the Social Sciences & Humanities Research Council of Canada, and co-directed with Glen Richards and Helios Design Lab. Offshore can be viewed at offshore-interactive.com/site.
As part of the research celebration, Longfellow will present a keynote talk and screening of her latest film, Offshore. In her talk, titled “Petromelancholia: Offshore, Digital Activism and the Representational Challenge of Ecological Disaster,” Longfellow will speak about the interactive documentary. The film explores the next chapter of oil exploration, taking viewers hundreds of miles offshore and thousands of feet below the ocean floor where the hazards are immense, but the profits are bigger. Offshore exposes the catastrophic consequences when something goes wrong.
The presentation and lecture will take place in the Mirkopoulos Theatre, 004 Accolade East Building, Keele Campus. A reception will follow in the CIBC Lobby.
Offshore is the latest production in a storied career. Longfellow’s work has won a slew of prestigious awards, including: the Audience Award for Best Experimental Film for Dead Ducks at the Santa Cruz Film Festival (2011); a Bronze Remi Award for Weather Report at the Houston Film Festival (2008); Best Cultural Documentary for Tina in Mexico at the Havana International Film Festival (2002); a Canadian Genie for Shadowmaker/ Gwendolyn MacEwen, Poet (1998); and the Grand Prix at Oberhausen for Our Marilyn (1988). Other films include Gerda (1992), A Balkan Journey (1996) and Carpe Diem (2010).
She has also published articles on documentary, feminist film theory and Canadian cinema in Public, CineTracts, Screen and the Journal of Canadian Film Studies. She is a co-editor (with Scott MacKenzie and Tom Waugh) of the anthology The Perils of Pedagogy: The Works of John Greyson (2013) and Gendering the Nation: Canadian Women Filmmakers (1992).
All are welcome to attend.