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Dr Roz Mortimer

Senior Lecturer Film, UCA Farnham

Academic, School of Film Media and Performing Arts

Dr Roz Mortimer is an artist and filmmaker with a particular interest in hybrid documentary forms and the cinema of trauma. She has a PhD in Hybrid Documentary Film, an MA in Visual Sociology and has lectured at universities in the UK and USA.

Her award-winning moving image work has been supported by Arts Council England, Film London Artist’s Moving Image Network (FLAMIN), Wellcome Trust, Rockefeller Foundation, British Council, Animate Projects and Channel 4 Television. She regularly speaks about her work at national and international public forums and academic conferences.

Roz originally trained as a textile artist, exhibiting mixed media installations in the UK and Europe and working commercially as a production designer before expanding her practice to include film, photography, sound, performance and writing. She began working with moving image in 1995 and since then her interdisciplinary and award-winning films have been exhibited widely around the world in cinemas, galleries, film festivals, online and on television. Her films are distributed internationally by LUX, Filmotor, Magic Lantern Movies, 7th Art Releasing, EMAF and Cinenova. Roz’s screenwriting is represented by Valerie Hoskins Associates.

Dr Roz Mortimer, Senior Lecturer Film

Research Statement

Roz’s most recent research-led work has been focused on hybrid documentary forms that encompass reenactment and the tableau vivant; trauma cinema; and the spectral turn. Through this, she has been exploring the historical marginalisation of the Roma and the rise of the far right in contemporary Europe through a long engagement with Roma communities, post-conflict landscapes and witness testimony, resulting in a collection of works that have culminated in her hybrid documentary feature The Deathless Woman which had its world premiere at the BFI London Film Festival in October 2019.

Research Supervision

Roz supervises practice-based research students. She is interested in working with students whose research interests include hybrid documentary forms, re-enactment in documentary practice, trauma cinema, testimony, phenomenology, affect, the uncanny, sensory methods, experimental empiricism, haunting and the spectral turn, fantasy and the fantastic in a political context, socio-political filmmaking, marginalised peoples and histories, practices of artist and experimental film.

Professional Membership, Affiliation and Consultancy

Professional Membership, Affiliation and Consultancy:

Roz has been a peer reviewer for the Wellcome Trust (Sciart Awards, Large Arts Awards, Small Arts Awards), London Artists’ Film and Video Awards, Animate Projects (Drive Awards), Four Corners (Fathom Residency), Montana State University.

External examination:

2013 – 2016 External Examiner. Royal Holloway University, Department of Media Arts. BA Media Arts (Screen Documentary, Cinematography, Creative Sound Design, Contemporary Media Art)

Awards, Grants and Commissions:

Roz’s award-winning work has been supported by and commissioned by Arts Council England, Film London Artist’s Moving Image Network (FLAMIN), Wellcome Trust, Rockefeller Foundation, British Council, Animate Projects and Channel 4 TV.

  • 2020 Ake Dikhea Festival of Romani Film, Special Jury Award for The Deathless Woman
  • 2020 Film London Lodestar Award
  • 2019 FLAMIN Production Award: The Deathless Woman
  • 2018 FLAMIN Development Award: The Deathless Woman
  • 2018 University of Westminster CREAM research award: The Deathless Woman
  • 2017 Arts Council England, Grants for the Arts award: The Deathless Woman
  • 2016 Elephant Trust award: The Deathless Woman
  • 2015 CREAM PhD Scholarship. University of Westminster
  • 2014 Goldsmiths, University of London award for Outstanding Academic Achievement in MA Visual Sociology
  • 2013 Microsoft Research Studentship, Goldsmiths, University of London
  • 2012 Arts Council England, Grants for the Arts award: This Is History (After All)
  • 2012 Animate Projects / Arts Council England R&D award: Reduced to Silence
  • 2011 Channel 4 Television / Random Acts / FLAMIN commission: The Flayed Horse
  • 2010 Wellcome Trust People Award: 94 Elements cross platform project
  • 2007 British Council Travel Award: Tehran International Documentary Film Festival, Iran
  • 2006 LAFVA award. Arts Council England / Film London completion award: Passages
  • 2005 Channel 4 Television commission. 4x3min films: Tales from the Arctic Circle
  • 2004 Wellcome Trust Sciart Production Award: Invisible
  • 2004 Rockefeller Foundation Residency at Bellagio Study Centre, Italy
  • 2003 Wellcome Trust Sciart Research & Development award: Invisible
  • 2002 animate! Production Award (Arts Council England/Channel 4): Safety Tips for Kids
  • 2001 Wellcome Trust Science on Stage and Screen Award: Gender Trouble
  • 2001 British Council award: Dog of My Dreams
  • 2000 Year of the Artist, East England Arts residency at Southend Museum and Focal Point Gallery
  • 2000 Tampere International Film Festival, Finland. Documentary Award: Wormcharmer
  • 2000 London Production Fund / LAFVA production award: Dog of My Dreams
  • 2000 British Council award: Neverland
  • 2000 Year of the Artist, East England Arts production award: Neverland
  • 1998 Arts Council England film production award: Wormcharmer
  • 1997 Arts Council England visual arts award: Reform with Moving Houses
  • 1996 Arts Council of England New Collaborations R&D Award with Moving Houses)
  • 1995 Arts Council of England Artist’s Film & Video Production Award: Bloodsports for Girls

Further Information

  • Filmography
    • The Deathless Woman (89’ 2019)
    • It’s Going to Rain (4’ 2018)
    • This is History (after all) (31’, 2014)
    • Passages (20’, 2007)
    • Invisible (63’, 2006)
    • Tales from the Arctic Circle (4x3’, 2005)
    • Safety Tips for Kid (5’, 2003)
    • Gender Trouble (24’, 2002)
    • Dog of my Dreams (12’, 2001)
    • Neverland (13’, 2000)
    • Airshow (4’, 1999)
    • Wormcharmer (9’, 1998)
    • Blooodsorts for Girls (12’, 1995)
  • Other Artworks (selected)
    • Sites of Memory II (2014)
    • Traces (2014)
    • Reduced to Silence: landscape, atrocity and a culture of forgetting (2013)
    • Sites of Memory (2012). Commissioned by the Open Gallery
    • The Flayed Horse: Human-Animal Relations in the American West (2011)
    • Passages MP3 (2007)
    • ReForm (1999)
    • Margate Sands (1998)
    • Split/Suite (1996)
    • Vhita (1996)
  • Conferences, Symposia, Lectures, Masterclasses and Public Events
    • 2021 Dark Economies, University of Falmouth (upcoming). Presentation: It’s dark now and I am beginning to feel that something is trying to keep me here, telling me that I should not leave.
    • 2021 Screening and public discussion event. Methods Lab, Goldsmiths, University of London.
    • 2020 Public discussion event, AKE DIKHEA Festival of Romani Film, Berlin.
    • 2020 B3 Biennial, Germany. In conversation with Jennifer Martin.
    • 2020 Masterclass. MA Ethnographic & Documentary Film, Department of Anthropology, UCL.
    • 2020 Open City Documentary Festival, London. Panel. Demystifying the Development Process.
    • 2019 Hybrid Documentary Practice: the tensions between fact and fiction. Lecture, Kingston University.
    • 2019 Burning Questions in Documentary. Presentation and public discussion event. BFI London Film Festival.
    • 2017 The Tableau Vivant: across Media, History and Culture. Columbia University, New York. Conference presentation.: Pools of Affect: The Tableau Vivant as a Disruptive Space.
    • 2017 UCL Festival of Visual Cultures, The Anatomy of Festivals, panel.
    • 2017 American Comparative Literature Association Annual Conference. The Forensic Imagination. Conference Presentation: I Feel Myself Looked at by the Things: phenomenology as a strategy for addressing trauma.
    • 2017 Poetics and Politics of Documentary Symposium. University of Sussex. Conference presentation: Pools of Affect: The Tableau Vivant as a Disruptive Space.
    • 2016 Sensitive Histories. Artist’s talk at Autograph ABP.
    • 2016 Visible Evidence XXIII. Montana State University, USA. Conference presentation: Bringing a Ghost into Being: experience, truth and invention in socially engaged documentary.
    • 2016 Ecstatic Truth: Defining the Essence of Animated Documentary. Royal College of Art. Symposium presentation: Traumatic Histories and Phenomenology as Method.
    • 2015 Film, Dream, and Visionary Cinema. Lecture. MA Film and Television, University of Westminster.
    • 2015 Fathom Symposium. Artist’s talk at Four Corners / London Met University
    • 2014 Transmissions and Entanglements symposium. Goldsmiths, University of London. Presentation: Exploring Haunting Through Technology.
    • 2014 Sites of Collective Memory at Agency Gallery, London. In conversation with Michaela Crimmin, Director of Culture + Conflict
    • 2014 Sites of Collective Memory at Cube Gallery, Leicester. In conversation with Delaine Le Bas and Abigail Addison.
    • 2013 Reduced to Silence: the Roma Holocaust. Public discussion event and screening. In collaboration with Gypsy Roma Traveler History Month. Hackney, London.
    • 2012 Roma: Self-Representation and Popular Media symposium. Amnesty International, Autograph ABP. Presentation: Reduced to Silence.
    • 2010 Aberystwyth University. Research presentation: Landscape Memory and Society: a journey through three films.
    • 2009 7th European Feminist Research Conference, Utrecht, NL. Presentation: Landscape, Memory and Society.
    • 2007 Melancholic States conference, Lancaster University. Plenary presentation: Invisible Losses.
    • 2007 Human Rights Centre, University of Essex, UK. Masterclass: Invisible.
    • 2007 FDMX Anglia University, Cambridge, UK. Masterclass.
    • 2005 University of Hildesheim, Germany. Masterclass.
    • 2005 Gallery presentation: Gender Trouble. 101 Intersex. NGBK, Berlin.
    • 2005 Newcastle Science Festival, UK. Masterclass.
    • 2004 Royal College of Obstetrics and Gynecology, London. Conference presentation: Gender Trouble.
    • 2002 Liverpool Biennale, Sciart symposium. Presentation: Gender Trouble.
  • Publications
    • Talking Back to Science: Art Science and the Personal. Edited by Bergit Arends and Verity Slater. (2004) Wellcome Trust.
    • 101 Intersex. Das Zwei-Geschlechter-System als Menschenrechtsverletzung (2005) NGBK, New Society for Visual Arts, Berlin.
    • ReForm: sixteen contemporary artists (1999) Moving Houses, London.
    • Stories Behind the Screen: Recent Video Art by Ten European Video Artists (2000) European Media Art Festival (EMAF) and Virtual Centre Media Net (VCM), Germany.
    • Muistoja Syvalta: Divers Memories (1996) University of Northumbria.
  • Published Interviews (selected)
    • Variety. Deathless Woman’s Roz Mortimer on Documenting Far Right Violence Then and Now. Oct 2019
    • Antennae: The Journal of Nature in Visual Culture. Issue 8, Vol. 2. February 2009. Roz Mortimer: The Beauty of Diegetic Animals.
  • Recent Exhibitions & Screenings (selected)

    2021

    • Glasgow Short Film Festival

    2020

    • Romedia Human Rights Film Days, Budapest.
    • B3 Biennial, Germany.
    • Aesthetica Film Festival, UK.
    • AKE DIKHEA Festival of Romani Film, Berlin.
    • Borderlines Film Festival, UK.
    • EBS International Documentary Festival, Korea.
    • Central Council of German Sinti and Roma.
    • TV Broadcast: EBS1, Korea.

    2019

    • BFI London Film Festival, UK.
    • Ji.hlava International Documentary Film Festival, CZ.

    2018

    • Aphrodite Festival, Athens, Greece.

    2017

    • Q-Movie-Bar, B-Movie, Hamburg, Germany.
    • Rouch 100, Close Up Film Centre, London.
    • Attenborough Centre for the Creative Arts, UK.

    2015

    • IRONY AS SUBVERSION. European Media Art Festival, Osnabrück, Germany.
    • FADE INTO YOU. Kunstalle Mainz, Germany.

    2014

    • SITES OF COLLECTIVE MEMORY. Cafe Gallery Projects, London. Curated by Animate Projects.
    • SITES OF COLLECTIVE MEMORY. Phoenix Gallery Leicester. Curated by Animate Projects.
    • THIS IS VISUAL SOCIOLOGY. 310 NXRoad Gallery, London.

    2012

    • ISAZ 2012: the arts and sciences of human-animal interaction, Cambridge, UK.
    • Strelka Institute for Media, Architecture and Design, Moscow.
    • The Open Gallery at How the Light Gets In. Hay-on-Wye, UK.
    • RANDOM ACTS, Channel 4 Television, UK.

    2011

    • Copeland Gallery, Bozeman, Montana.
    • THE DAY OF PRINTING. Gallery Proun, Moscow, Russia.
    • THE ANIMAL GAZE: VIDEO WORKS, SIA Gallery, Sheffield, UK.
    • UNEARTHED. Warton House, London.
    • THE OPEN PRIZE FOR VIDEO PAINTING, Shoreditch Town Hall, London, UK.
    • The Open Gallery, Crunch Art Fair, Hay-on-Wye, UK.
    • Procrastinator Theatre, Bozeman, Montana, USA.
    • Carnival of Feminist Cultural Activism festival at York City Screen, UK.
    • CAPTURING TIME Film Series, Centre for Contemporary Art, Glasgow, UK
    • The Floating Cinema, London.
    • SHOOTING ANIMALS: A HISTORY OF ANIMALS ON FILM. Oberhausen FF, Germany.
    • SPACEX Gallery, Exeter, UK.
    • ANIMALS ON FILM. Hamburg Short Film Festival, Germany. Special program.
    • Queer Lisboa 15, Lisbon Gay and Lesbian Film Festival.
    • RANDOM ACTS, Channel 4 Television, UK.

    2010

    • HUMAN INSTINCT & ANIMAL LOVE, International Short Film Festival WINTERTHUR, Zurich.
    • Quotes from the Earth Environmental Film Festival at the India International Centre, Delhi.
    • 21st Hamburg International Queer Film Festival, Amnesty International Program.

    2009

    • MEDIA IN SPACE. Kuntsbezirk Gallery, Stuttgart Filmwinter Festival for Expanded Media, Germany.
    • SUSTAINABLE WORLD Film Series, Weatherspoon Art Museum, Greensboro, NC, USA.
    • THE POLITICS OF FOOD Film Series. Franklin Humanities Institute, Duke University, USA.
    • GRAND CHALLENGE OF SUSTAINABLE CITIES Film Series, University College London.
    • DIFFERENT HORIZONS: Saison Video 2009. Ecole Beaux Arts, Valenciennes, France.
    • THE ANIMAL GAZE. Centre for Contemporary Art & the Natural World, Exeter.
    • EVOLUTION 2009. Leeds Met Gallery, UK.
    • TIER-PERSPEKTIVEN (ANIMAL PERSPECTIVES). Georg-Kolbe-Museum, Berlin.
    • TIER-WERDEN MENSCH-WERDEN (BECOMING ANIMAL BECOMING HUMAN), NGBK Berlin.
    • PERSISTENCE RESISTANCE 2009: a festival of contemporary political films, India International Centre, New Delhi.
    • Wild and Scenic Environmental Film Festival, Nevada City, USA.
    • Sheffield Adventure Film Festival, UK.

    2008

    • GOTHIC, Fieldgate Gallery, London, UK.
    • THE ANIMAL GAZE, Unit 2 Gallery, London.
    • PROJECT TAXONOMIES, Comafosca Art Centre, Barcelona, Spain.
    • NEW NATURE, Royal College of Art, London.
    • SUFRAGETTE CITY, Curated by Sheena MacRae, The Spare Room Gallery, London.
    • PERSISTENCE RESISTANCE 2008: A FESTIVAL OF CONTEMPORARY POLITICAL FILMS, India International Centre, New Delhi.
    • 700IS 2008, Experimental Film & Video Festival, Iceland.
    • Dawson City Film Festival, Yukon, Canada.
    • Trento Film Festival, Italy.
    • Autrans International Film Festival, Autrans, France.
    • European Film Festival Palic, Subotica, Serbia.
    • One World, International Human Rights Festival, Berlin, Germany.
    • CHROMOSOME 2008: GENDER UNDER THE LENS, Siri Fort, Delhi, India.
    • Brave Festival, Wroclaw, Poland.
    • Guangzhou Documentary Film Festival, China.

    2007

    • CRIME SCENE. Galerie Adler, Frankfurt am Main, Germany.
    • VELOCITY. Folly, Morecambe Bay, Lancashire, UK.
    • The British Museum, London.
    • Barbican Cinema, London.
    • Dokumentarkino, Oslo, Norway.
    • NOW, The Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona
    • Human Rights Centre, Colchester, UK
    • Institut Municipal d’Acció Cultal, Lleida, Spain.
    • Museum of Granollers, Spain.
    • Principal Theater of Olot, Spain.
    • Art Centre Cal Massó of Reus, Spain.
    • CINEMA VERITE, Iran International Documentary Film Festival, Tehran.
    • DOCSDF 2nd International Documentary Film Festival of México City.
    • Birds Eye View Film Festival, ICA, London.
    • Oxdox Film Festival, Oxford, Milton Keynes, London.
    • Ann Arbour Film Festival, USA.
    • Britspotting Film Festival, Berlin and Munich, Germany.
    • Ecofilms, Rhodos International Film Festival, Greece.
    • Future Landscapes at the Cambridge Film Festival, UK.
    • Camden International Film Festival, Maine, USA.
    • Planet in Focus International Environmental Film Festival, Toronto, Canada.
    • Festival dei Popoli, International Documentary Film Festival, Florence, Italy.
    • Alternativa, 14th Independent Film Festival of Barcelona, Spain.
    • One World Berlin, International Human Rights Film Festival, Germany.
    • LOOP Video Art Fair, Barcelona.
    • PSBT International Film Festival on Gender and Sexuality, New Delhi, India.
    • Shadow Festival, Amsterdam, Netherlands.
    • Madurai Film Festival, India.
    • Mecal Festival Internacional de Cortometrajes de Barcelona, Spain.