On Tuesday night, the Spoke Art Documentary Competition hosted the Awards Ceremony for their 2024 Prize at the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art. Among the 60 films submitted this year, an impressive six L6 LEH students made the shortlist: Daisy, Ella, Amara, Safia, Maddie and Lily-Mae.

For this competition, entrants must create a five to seven minute film about a work of art or building of their choosing. This challenge calls on the development of not only research and script writing skills but also the evolution of audio-visual flair and serious technical ability!

We are delighted that Maddie achieved Second Place for her powerful and visually arresting piece on Chris Ofili’s mural Requiem. Ed Hands, one of the adjudicators at Spoke (he acts as Director of Studies at Art History Abroad), commended Maddie for tackling a topic so pertinent and potent in an assured yet delicate manner. He said “Maddie’s film weaves together tones of grandeur and religiosity with hard hitting fact, just as Ofili does in Requiem. This film is a tour de force of young filmmaking.”

There was even more LEH success to follow as Amara was awarded the prestigious overall First Place for her film focussing on an iconic piece of feminist art from 1985 called Housewives with Steak-knives by Sutapa Biswas. Abigail Harrison Moore is Professor of Art History and Museum Studies at the University of Leeds and another of the Spoke adjudicators. She announced Amara’s win and was full of praise: “Amara's film stood out for me from the start. I loved the way that she physically inserted Sutapa Biswas's work into a traditionally canonical art history text full of art by white, European men. Amara's powerful voice-over, combined with a creative approach using animation, photography, previously made film stock and new film, plus a printed apron and steak knife, demonstrated her ability to engage the viewer. Her research was incredibly strong, revealing the context in which the work was made and the context in which she saw it. I was frequently made to look again at a work I thought I knew so well, given that Sutapa studied in my department at the University of Leeds with my wonderful colleague, Professor Griselda Pollock and given that I live in Bradford where the painting is usually displayed as part of the collections at Cartwright Hall. I know both Griselda and Sutapa would appreciate seeing Amara's film: I thought it was brave and beautiful.”

Huge congratulations to both winners, all those who made the shortlist and indeed every single L6 Art Historian who crafted and submitted a film. We will be excited to screen all 15 of them at a Movie Night to be held in the Theatre early in the Summer Term!

By Ms Farnum-Ford, History of Art teacher