I am a writer, film critic, tutor, programmer and filmmaker from Gateshead. This website began life as a joint venture in criticism between Bobby Lowe, co-host of The Journeymen film podcast, and myself.
Curation
I am currently Creative Director of Alchemy Film & Arts in Hawick, Scotland. I am responsible for the creative vision of all Alchemy outputs, including its annual Film and Moving Image Festival.
Other film festivals for which I have worked as a programming consultant and/or Q&A moderator include Bradford International Film Festival, the Viennale, Crossing Europe (Linz), Kino Otok (Izola), IndieLisboa (Lisbon), Curto Curcuíto (Santiago de Compostela) and Seville European Film Festival.
Education
I have a first-class BA (Hons.) degree in Film and English Studies from the University of East Anglia and a distinction-standard MA in Film from Newcastle University.
I am currently a practice-based PhD candidate at Newcastle; my project, which is funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, responds to questions of urban space, structural film and walking.
My recent films include Dead Centre (2017), which received its theatrical premiere at European Film Festival Palić in July 2018), and Lea River Bridges (2017), which screened at East End Film Festival (London) 2017, FeKK (Ljubljana) 2017, AmDocs (Palm Springs) 2018, and the Sociological Review's Undisciplining Conference (Baltic Gateshead) 2018.
Criticism
My criticism has been published by Sight & Sound, the British Film Institute, Reverse Shot, MUBI Notebook, VICE, Indiewire, RogerEbert.com, the Guardian, Playboy, Film Comment, Filmmaker, Cineaste, Senses of Cinema, Little White Lies, Fandor, Calvert Journal, Tribune, kolik.film (Austria), KINO! (Slovenia), Ekran (Slovenia), SIRP (Estonia), Virgin Movies and others. I have also reviewed films on BBC Radio.
I contributed several essays, including the chapter introduction on documentaries, to Directory of World Cinema: Britain 2 (Intellect 2015), and have written liner notes for a number of Blu-ray and DVD releases by Arrow and Indicator.
I co-host a film podcast called The Journeymen.
Teaching
In addition to my role as a Teaching Assistant on undergraduate film-practice modules at Newcastle University, I have tutored workshops of various shapes and sizes for early-career film critics.
These include the FIPRESCI Warsaw Critics Project at Warsaw Film Festival (2015-2017); the pilot edition of GoCritic! at Karlovy Vary International Film Festival (2018); Common Ground Film Critics at Dokufest in Prizen, Kosovo (2014); and other such workshops at ZubrOFFka Short Film Festival 2014 (Białystok, Poland), Black Nights Film Festival 2015-2016 (Tallinn, Estonia), Curtas Vila do Conde 2016 (Portugal), Berwick Film & Media Arts Festival 2014 (UK) and Cinema Rediscovered 2017-2018 (Bristol, UK).
Jury Duty
Since 2013, I have participated in juries at film festivals in Cartagena de Indias, Warsaw, Ljubljana, Marseille, Palić, Drama, Thessaloniki, Bratislava, Lisbon, Lecce, Santiago de Compostela, Tabor, Lima, Bradford, Łódź, Pančevo and Palo del Colle. You can find a complete list, including fellow jurors and winning films, here.
If you would like to commission me for work relating to any of the above, you can contact me at michael.pattison@idfilm.net.
