Graeme Arnfield receives FLAMIN Productions Award 2023

Film London announces the recipient of the 2023 FLAMIN Productions award.

Artist filmmaker Graeme Arnfield will receive funding, tailored support and mentoring as he develops his new moving image project.

FLAMIN Productions aims to support the most exciting, innovative and challenging moving image projects. The only scheme of its kind in the UK, FLAMIN Productions commissions new, important and substantial moving image artworks that are ambitious in premise and duration, with an emphasis on projects that have strong potential for national and international exhibition and distribution. The artist will receive funding of £30,000 to produce their project, alongside ongoing development support.

Adrian Wootton, Chief Executive of Film London and the British Film Commission, said: “Since its inception, FLAMIN Productions has generated an impressive slate of creative projects from some of the capital’s most exciting artist filmmakers. The scheme has successfully supported artists with diverse and unique approaches to the moving image, producing work that has received national and international critical acclaim.

“Now in its eleventh round, we are thrilled to award Graeme Arnfield funding for his new project. We look forward to supporting Graeme as he makes his most ambitious work to date, adding to the stellar array of previous FLAMIN Productions. I would like to thank Arts Council England for their support of this invaluable scheme.’’

Zero Gravity Resistance is a psychedelic reconstructive essay on the history of labour struggles in outer space, cataloguing the tactics of resistance practiced by those working in weightless conditions. In 1973, three astronauts went on strike on-board ‘Skylab’, NASA’s first ever space-station, downing their tools in zero-gravity over disagreements about work conditions.

Taking these events as a starting point, the film will examine and re-stage this historic strike action, guided by transcripts gathered from archives to speculate on possible futures to come.

To date, FLAMIN Productions has supported and commissioned a range of works that have gone on to achieve critical success and substantial international audiences. Recent successes include Jasmina Cibic’s The Gift, which had its world premiere at the BFI London Film Festival in 2021, and Patrick Goddard’s Animal Antics, which toured the UK as part of British Art Show 9.

Michelle Williams Gamaker, co-recipient of the FLAMIN Productions award in 2022, premiered her moving image project Thieves at the South London Gallery earlier this year. Thieves extends the artist’s exploration of Fictional Revenge with a fantasy adventure reimagining of 1924’s The Thief of Bagdad, as formerly marginalised characters claim leading roles to reclaim the story as their own. Thieves will be shown in late 2023 by co-commissioners Dundee Contemporary Arts (DCA).

Onyeka Igwe’s 2022 commission A Radical Duet will be presented in a solo exhibition at The Bonington Gallery, Nottingham, in early 2024. A work in progress screening was held in May 2023 at London’s Raven Row as part of PerAnkh: The June Givanni PanAfrican Cinema Archive.

Commissioned in 2020, Suki Chan’s Fog in My Head explores the experience of dementia, made in collaboration with author and activist Wendy Mitchell, and featured in solo exhibitions at Bluecoat, Liverpool and Danielle Arnaud, London. Fog in My Head is part of Chan’s wider project CONSCIOUS, which was selected in 2023 as one of ten projects for the Sundance Institute Sandbox Fund.