The Global Goals
In 2015, UN member states agreed to 17 global Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to end poverty, protect the planet and ensure prosperity for all. Dani's work contributes towards the following SDG(s):
About Dani
I make films, photographs, and experimental photomedia projects. I specialise in documentary practices, cinematography, and place-related media arts. My career in the media industry spanned working as a producer director in non-fiction with broadcasters - BBC and C4, charities and NGOs such as the Red Cross and VSO, Government - Home Office, and Office of Civil Society, as well media curation, managment, and producer roles with media organisations such as Watershed and KWMC. I worked in socially engaged arts supporting people without filmmaking experience to make films about their own lives. This involved working with participants to co-design variations on the Digital Storytelling filmmaking method. I have worked in various media production roles including as cinematographer, for example on a feature drama film about indigenous land rights in Bolivia, and as an editor in non-fiction, and sound recordist. I am a member of the BEEF filmmaking collective and the Cube Microplex collective.
I previously taught at the University of the West of England and Bath Spa University where I completed my qualification in higher education teaching in 2013. I work half the week at the University of Plymouth. My teaching enables students to apply contemporary technical skills in critical creative practice. I have led three modules at Plymouth. In the Professional Filmmaker module student filmmakers worked together with partners in the third sector to make issue-based non-fiction films. These films have gone on to create impact outside of accademia. Students have frequently gained paid employment through their placements. In Screen Dialogues students apply insights from film studies to develop film practice. In the Experimentation module students create a portfolio of short risk-taking practice-based research pieces in preparation for their end of course short film piece. Students work from Professional Filmmaker has gone on to win RTS Awards in Short Form Documentary, Journalism, and Save the Planet. I supervise PhD students using practice-based research in filmmaking, photography, contemporary art, and socially engaged arts practice.
My current research is on the relationships produced between place, people, and image. I am finding how different sensing technologies change our understanding of places. This has resulted in film, located media, and augmented reality work. I have worked as a Government Advisor on Place. I have collaborated on international research projects including at Filmuniversität Babelsberg involving approaches from cultural post-humanism in collaborative film production. The award winning work has been exhibited internationally. My writing employs the philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead in understanding how photomedia practices produce novel modes of relation. For example, I am currently researching how techniques such as photogrammetry and lidar afford ways of making moving image that create different understandings of place.
I am proud to be involved in the unique filmmaking department at the University of Plymouth.
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