About

Brighton Cinecity with Sussex University

Screenings of Middle East and North African Film organised by Professor Martin Evans for the Middle East and North Africa Centre at Sussex (MENACS) and the Sussex Centre for the Visual (SCV).

Ani Laurie is a filmmaker and writer. Her most recent work is The Earth Belongs To No One, a short film drama shot in Sheffield and the Staffordshire Peak District that follows a 16 year-old, Jessey May, who must do everything in her power to protect her younger sister and which was nominated for the Best British short film at the 2015 Raindance Film Festival.  Stylistically her films are low on dialogue using performance, image and sound design to drive the narrative.  Her collection of poems have been performed at The East London literary film festival and Lovebox. Born and raised in South West London with a brief passage of time spent in Marrakech, Ani Laurie lives in London. 

This film class will begin with screening of her acclaimed 2015 short film Pedigree.  Telling the story of 30-something London banker who is struggling with the life he leads when a woman from his past arrives on his door-step, this beautifully atmospheric film examines issues of ancestry, lineage and grief.  Then, in conversation with Martin Evans, she will explore the creative process that led to this film.  In particular she will explain how Pedigree, although set in London, is rooted upon a range of ideas and personal experiences including a portrait of Lucien Freud by Francis Bacon which she re-discovered a few years ago hidden in a scrapbook; an essay by the Algerian- French writer Albert Camus also in the same scrap book; and the sudden passing of my uncle “Brown” in July 2013 that had stayed dormant in her me as she had not quite grieved over the loss. He was a poet and a Professor of French in Rabat, Morocco - leaving a significant imprint in her life.