California Dreaming

by Inés Bernal Taravillo

In 2018 I embarked on a 3-week roadtrip to the west coast. This is the first video of the series. Shot in LA, San Francisco and the road in between.

Born in 1999, Inés Bernal Taravillo moved to London from Madrid in autumn 2017. Specializing in film, she is a final year Media & Communications student at Goldsmiths University of London. Passionate about filmmaking and music, she is a photographer, filmmaker and editor working for travelling agencies, events companies and music artists. Having lived in Thailand and being exposed to different cultures, Inés is passionate about the diversity of the world and the spontaneity of the moment, and reflects her artistic universe in the freedom of her projects, taking care and thought of the atmosphere in each creation. For more of her work, visit her website or follow her on Instagram, @akaberni.

MAD CITY

by Inés Bernal Taravillo

Shapes and shadows from Madrid city, my home.

Sunsets and colors, good music and better friends.

There’s something magical about being on a rooftop – having the whole city at your feet without being seen.

Shot from my favorite spot in the world.

Shot by Inés Bernal and Javi Barredo, edited by Inés Bernal

Born in 1999, Inés Bernal Taravillo moved to London from Madrid in autumn 2017. Specializing in film, she is a final year Media & Communications student at Goldsmiths University of London.

Passionate about filmmaking and music, she is a photographer, filmmaker and editor working for travelling agencies, events companies and music artists.

Having lived in Thailand and being exposed to different cultures, Inés is passionate about the diversity of the world and the spontaneity of the moment, and reflects her artistic universe in the freedom of her projects, taking care and thought of the atmosphere in each creation.

For more of her work, visit her website or follow her on Instagram, @akaberni.

How to Destroy the World in 30 Seconds

by Natalya Mykhaylyuk, Anežka Aubrechtová, Sophie Wolge, and Ian Hu

Shot on campus, the film looks at how the most simple, everyday actions can have far-reaching global consequences. In the film, a student (played by Ian Hu) unwittingly contributes to the destruction of the planet with just one lunch and a mere 30 seconds of screentime. The students behind the film hope it can make us stop and think about how our habitual actions impact the world, and hopefully encourage us to take responsibility for preserving our planet.

Made by Natalya Mykhaylyuk, Anežka Aubrechtová, Sophie Wolge, and Ian Hu. They are a group of MA Filmmaking students who feel passionate about climate change and plastic pollution. The task given to the group behind this film was to create a 30-second How To video.

Disabled But Able

by Vivian Bai

Vivian Bai is a current MA in TV Journalism student and winner of the 2018 Broadcast Journalism Training Council’s TV News Feature Award. A previous fashion editor for Vogue China, Vivian is now working in Media Pioneers, a UK-China media group that focuses on co-producing documentary and drama series. For more, follow @vivianbw17.

Words by Karolina Wolska

Anna's Man

by Andrey Kravchenko

Andrey Kravchenko is a recent 2017 graduate of the BA Media & Communications degree. Crafted in between the brutish back-to-back workshops, his piece, “Anna’s Man” was written and performed during his final year. An enthusiast for all things quirky, Andrey work is best described as romantic fairy tales ladened with Russian humour. For more follow: @mrfffbloom.

Words by Anna McNutt

Dissonance

by Pauline Kausch

Twenty one year old Berlin filmmaker, Pauline Kausch, directed ‘Dissonance’ for her BA in Media & Communications degree at Goldsmiths, University of London. Amongst other short films, Pauline has also directed in London and New York at NYU Tisch School of the Arts in fiction, documentary, commercial and animated pieces. Previously working as Assistant Director on numerous feature films in Berlin, Hamburg and London, Pauline is currently in the process of producing her graduation film in London.

The Sunshine Boy

by Naaman Azhari

Having completed the majority of his education in France with gaps filled in Lebanon, Naaman Azhari recently completed his BA in Media & Communications at Goldsmiths, University of London in 2017. Naaman uses stop motion and digital animation to deliver poignant messages revolving around societal stigmas. Naaman has worked both in live action and animated projects in London, Beirut, Dubai, Amman and Paris.

Romeo and Juliet | A Silent Film

by Francesca Thompson

Drama and Theatre Arts student, Francesca Thompson reached out to us earlier in the year to submit her very own creative adaptation of Romeo and Juliet. 

Ovos

by Sam Finn, Daniel O'Brien, and Connie Freire de Sousa.

A story of eggs in love,

Mad Max: Fury Road – a Review

Fury Road is an action film in the purest sense of the word. The entire film is one long car chase, stopping only rarely to give you a quick breath, before jumping back into increasingly intense, high-speed action sequences with a fervour living up to its name. It relies very little on dialogue, and apart from a few key moments and iconic lines, much of it gets swallowed by the roar of engines without it ever being an issue.

So why, then, did I walk in hoping to at least enjoy the visuals, spectacle and explosions, and walk out having found one of my new favourite films?

Fury Road makes you care. It gives you near continuous, spectacular action shots at high speed in a visually magnificent setting, and in the middle of it all manages to get you invested in how it will turn out. It is a prime example of a film that trusts its audience. It does not waste time over-explaining background or plot points, nor do its characters get the opportunity for long, expository conversations.  Instead, we get hints and tidbits of information, and we are trusted to be able to fill in the blanks ourselves while the movie gets back to the people jumping between cars.  This also frees up time for the film to include an extensive array of characters, both good and bad. And, as an extra treat, a remarkable amount of them are female.

There is an unfortunate tendency in modern action films to include, at most, a couple of important women, with the result that said characters must face the burden of representing the entire female gender. In Fury Road we have the wives, the all-female Vulvani biker society, and of course Imperator Furiosa.  All of them have their individual stories and personalities, strengths and weaknesses. They are characters with agency, rather than mere plot devices and motivators for the male protagonist. Even when the wives are drinking water clad only in light, white dresses, they are not sexualised or objectified by the camera, a visual choice that would have strongly undermined their ferocious claim that “we are not things!” Further, the narrative does not take the easy way out by having Max decide to help them simply out of compassion or pity. His own survival depends on him joining them as much as theirs does, and so a far more interesting character dynamic develops.

This is especially true for Furiosa, who could have so easily defaulted into either the seemingly competent, but eventually in need of rescue love interest, or the perfect, kick-ass, unfailing, “strong-female-character” – the action film answer to the manic pixie dream girl.  But she moves beyond that. She is as much a protagonist in the movie as Max, but she doesn’t reduce his role in any way. She is just as gritty, dirty, damaged and real, and still she is very clearly and distinctly female. It is a vital part of her identity, but not a defining trait.

Their relationship starts out with a long, brutal fight, but rather than being told he eventually cares for her, we get to watch as they fight together, complementing each other’s strengths and weaknesses, and develop mutual respect. Again, the film presents perfect evidence to support the “show, don’t tell” argument. When Furiosa finally succumbs to the blood loss from a bullet wound and Max frantically tries to save her, the scene is infinitely more intense, despite them only having known each other a few days, than any action hero trying to save a wife or daughter we have only been told of.

Mad Max: Fury Road defied many expectations, and is to me an example of the how genre film can be unexpectedly progressive. It is far from the only instance of this in recent years (see, for instance, Pacific Rim) and we can only hope more directors will take note of the success of Fury Road, particularly amongst female fans.

by Martine Tufte