I have enjoyed this important book so much and as soon as I read it, over-enthusiastically wanted to write my own chapter. This course will be the next best thing! Watch this space for details.
27/01/23 Thrilled to say I’m one of 6 artist identifying as women in the Benywaidd group show at CARN. The works that have been accepted for exhibition are Trawstrefa/Transhumance and Always Your Little Boy. Exhibition opens 17th Feb – 26th March. Watch this space!
Absolutely delighted to say that Buckra Massa Pickney – Life of Enrico Stennett Windrush Elder won Best Unrestricted Short at the Gogs International Film Festival ast night! Watch @johartleyactor announcing us 👉🏽So thrilled to have been able to put Enrico’s story on screen thanks to NWREN for commissioning me via Race Council Cymru allocation of Welsh Government’s Windrush Commemoration funding, for @joannamartine and Alex Ashton for having the phenomenal generosity and trust to reach out and offer us use of their archive footage of Enrico, which meant we were able to bring the unvarnished truth of his experiences to light. Deep thanks to Professor Robert Moore for his insight and tireless lifelong commitment to the anti-racist struggle. Thanks must also go to Celyn Jones and all @gogsffilmfest Venue Cymru @ffilmcymru & Conwy CBC for having the vision to bring this festival to North Wales and for their thoughtful film selections across all categories. It was amazing to see so much Welsh film-making talent on screen/in the room/virtually- congratulations to all nominees and awardees! And last but not least thanks to Stage Fifty for the beautiful award! 🤎 #filmfestival #socialdocumentary_ #documentary #documentaryfilm #femalefilmmakers #filmeducation #ffilm #antiracisteducation #windrush #windrushgeneration
Thrilled to say I’m going to be making a documentary short on the life of Windrush Elder Stennett. I’m reading his book Buckra Massa Pickney for research. I met Enrico a long time ago, but unfortunately didn’t have a chance to film him when he was alive. However, I will be interviewing former colleagues who knew him well as well as using excerpts from his book. Filming starts August. Exciting!
09/10/2022 This project is now complete and it has been a total privilege to work on – a full update later on in the week when the film goes on general release.
You might remember the young film-makers I worked with in 2021 to explore embedding equality in the curriculum via TikTok? Known as the Aberconwy Allies, they have been awarded a Young PeaceMakers award from the Welsh Centre for International Affairs! Such lovely news – none of these projects happen without a team of people and hopefully we will all get to stand on the stage at the Llangollen International Eisteddfod to collect the award! Plus we have been awarded an overall peace trophy which is awarded each year to the young person or people who deemed to have made the biggest difference is in the form of a metal peace dove, sculpted by David Peterson (the renowned sculptor who created the Mametz Dragon in Flanders) Check back for an update next week
So thrilled to say that Stories We Cannot Tell has been selected for the Film Festival in Dublin.
From the festival blurb:
‘Ireland’s most literary film festival is back for its third year, and a very special one indeed as 2022 is the centenarian celebration of the publication of Ulysses (1922). The film festival was set up to be a celebration of cinema, literature, and artistic innovation, inspired by the long reaching arm of Ireland’s patriarch of modernism, James Joyce. The festival is run in partnership with the Bloomsday Festival & the James Joyce Centre and will run between the 11th – 16th June, with screenings taking place at the historic James Joyce Centre and the IFI, as well as Online. Over the previous two years we brought Bloomsday to you with our online programmes filled with Ulyssean cinematic delights in our Joycean Shorts programme. Though we loved the connection this gave us to the global Bloomsday community, it has always been our vision for the BFF to be an exciting live event, and to marry it with other Bloomsday traditions, e.g dressing up, live performances & readings. So this year, fingers crossed, we are very happy to be welcoming live audiences for the first time and hope that the festival will become an unmissable map point on the day’s adventure. So because of this, this year’s festival will be a hybrid event, physical and online.
The Bloomsday week (11th-16th June) hits a number of important dates in the Irish literary calendar. The birthday of W.B. Yeats lands on the 13th, the publication of Dubliners the 15th, and of course Bloomsday on the 16th. So accordingly, we will be celebrating Yeats’ birthday, and poetry as a whole, on the 13th with programmes of poetry shorts, made locally and around the world; on the 15th we will be celebrating all things Dublin with the Dublin Short Stories; and the Experimental, Literature, and Joycean programmes will be celebrated throughout as well. As will feature our new exciting competition ‘The One Minute Odyssey’ (Details on how to enter coming soon). It will be an exciting and diverse week, climaxing with a selection of the winners screening at the IFI on Bloomsday (16th). We want to encourage artistic innovation within the medium, and films that seek to push the craft forward, as Joyce did so greatly within his own craft, literature. Awards & Prizes Best Overall Short – The Ulysses Award Best Joycean Short – The James Joyce Award Best Literature Short – The Stephen Dedalus Award Best Poetry Short – The W.B. Yeats Award Best Experimental Short – The Proteus Award Best Dublin Short Story – The Dubliner Award Best 1 Minute Odyssey – The Odyssey Award Best Actor – The Leopold Bloom Award Best Actress – The Molly Bloom Award
17/06/22 And here’s the online gallery, also showing in Dublin:
Very thrilled to say that the Intro edit for Stories We Cannot Tell has been selected for Gwyl y Ferch filmfest at Pontio Sinema in Bangor. There will be a live event and some panel talks so watch this space for details!
08/03/22
Fantastic to see not only the film on the big screen with an audience, but to watch film shorts by other Welsh female film-makers. It was really inspiring and fascinating to see overlapping themes and techniques as well as the differences in approaches. I felt really thrilled and honoured to be amongst the cohort. I was slightly less thrilled to have got lost on the way (thank you iPhone maps!) and to find myself on a spotlit stage with a microphone in hand attempting to talk about a film which is all about the things we don’t say…(to be fair I knew I’d be doing this in advance but having got lost, missed the opportunity to find out what I might be asked to talk about!) Anyway, I think I said a few things and managed not to fall off the stage, so that’s all good.
Karen and I had a great chat in this podcast for Curious Creatives about shared backgrounds in visual arts and film; how I started out my established film-making practice 20 years ago and how I’ve developed emergent practices in the last few years in From Established to Emergent Practices (And Back Again) Have a listen!
13/05/23 Super-surprised and thrilled to say I won an award at the Ethnic Minority Welsh Women Achievement Awards event at Cardiff City Hall, for my contributions to culture and the arts.
I was not able to travel to the awards for personal reasons but if I had, I would’ve liked to say this: “I’m accepting this award on behalf of the many generous people whose stories I’ve been privileged to help tell over the last 21 years. This work does not happen in isolation! I stand on the shoulders of many giants of the anti-racist struggle whose legacies inspire and leave me in awe. I literally could not have made this work without any of them, nor without any of the many wonderful organisations and individuals who have commissioned me and worked with me over the years. This award is meaningful to me because the work is being judged by my peers – other women from minority ethnic backgrounds in Wales. It is not often that this happens. I also feel I haven’t really got started yet – so, watch me! Lastly, I dedicate this award to the memory of my very own achieving minority ethnic Welsh woman who has been a lifelong inspiration to me – Susheela Lourie MBE, recognised for her race equality work (MBE) and for the contributions she made to human welfare and Indo-British relations (Indian High Commission) to name but a few. She was also my Mum, and as many of you know, just recently gone to rest in peace and power. She is a hard act to follow but this award is good motivation to keep up the good work! Special thanks to all @_nwren for the nomination and for always being there and also to @entrepreneurial_empress for being outstanding and award-winning herself whilst graciously collecting my award for me“
Lal Davies 
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