Declamations! Film Screening with Q+A
When:
—
Venue:
Birkbeck Main Building, Malet Street
Join us for the first screening of Declamations, a 22-minute original documentary exploring the collective power of vocalisation through a series of dynamic street theatre performances in Norwich.
Directed by Bartek Dziadosz, and made in collaboration with writer Matthew Taunton, the film reflects on how voices come together to challenge, inspire, and transform public spaces. From powerful choruses to individual moments of expression, Declamations captures the resonance of people uniting in sound and purpose.
The screening will be followed by a conversation with the filmmaker Bartek Dziadosz, Helen Lindsay and the films producer Matthew Taunton, as they discuss the creative process behind the film, the themes of vocalisation, and the unique street theatre performances that inspired this work.
Matthew Taunton is Professor of Modern Literature at UEA and the producer of Declamations!. He is currently finishing a book called The Collective Voice: Twentieth-Century Literature and the Politics of Choral Speech, for Stanford University Press. His previous books are Fictions of the City: Class, Culture and Mass Housing in Paris and London and Red Britain: The Russian Revolution in Mid-Century Culture.
Bartek Dziadosz is a filmmaker and media lecturer. He works as the Director of the Derek Jarman Lab at Birkbeck, University of London. His first feature was The Trouble with Being Human These Days (2013), a hybrid documentary about Zygmunt Bauman and liquid modernity, followed by The Seasons in Quincy: Four Portraits of John Berger (2016), which he directed together with Tilda Swinton, Colin MacCabe and Christopher Roth. Bartek ‘s short films explore a wide range of subjects, from the history of subliminal advertising (Nothing Exists Until You Sell It, 2021) to the portrayal of a Bakelite artefacts collector (The Plastic Phoenix, 2020).
He studied at the Jagiellonian University, Westminster Film School and the London Consortium. His PhD thesis was on theories of editing, and he now teaches classes in cultural studies and media practice at Birkbeck and on the Pittsburgh-London Film Program.
Bartek’s latest film is The Hexagonal Hive and a Mouse in a Maze, a film essay about learning, AI and imagination, co-directed with Tilda Swinton and premiered at the Sheffield Doc/Fest and Telluride in 2024.
Helen Lindsay, ACR: After completing a Fine Art degree at Chelsea School of Art she trained as a paper conservator and was lucky enough to secure their first job at the Bodleian Library. After 8 years there, Helen moved to the London Archives where she managed the conservation and reprographics studios. After this Helen became a freelance consultant and carried out projects for the Wellcome Trust & National Trust as well as for local authorities, charities, universities and museums across the UK. They are currently an Icon intern advisor and project worker for The Restoration Trust which aims to creatively break down barriers to inclusion and increase accessibility to heritage. Their interest in preservation spans both heritage and environmental conservation as they manage 18 acres of wetland and woodland. They are a supporter of the SpyCops campaign and have written about my father who, as a high profile communist, was under 30 years of surveillance by MI5.
Declamations! was generously supported by the British Academy, the Arts and Humanities Research Council, the University of East Anglia, and Helen Lindsay.
Contact name:
Matthew Barrington