OUR Team
Andy Lawrence is founding director of Filmmaking for Fieldwork - F4F™. He convenes and teaches our annual F4F Summer School and offers editing support and project work. Andy is a senior lecturer at the Granada Centre for Visual Anthropology at the University of Manchester in the UK, where he is also filmmaker-in-residence. He has held visiting professorships at the University of Bern in Switzerland, the University of Tromsø in Norway and the Free University in Berlin, Germany. Andy studied social anthropology and ancient history at University College London and visual anthropology at the Granada Centre before receiving his PhD in anthropology, media and performance from the University of Manchester. Andy describes himself as a 'maker of things', he began his working life as a carpenter before making documentary for broadcast television in the UK, USA and the Netherlands and independently as a film and video artist. His films about childbirth, death, adolescence, old age, adventure and identity in the UK and India look at the uncertainty that surrounds momentous and life changing experiences. A selection of these can be viewed from this website. Currently, Andy is developing a new documentary film based in the Netherlands and he is co-editing a collection of essays with Martha Dietrich entitled, Empirical Art: filmmaking for fieldwork in practice (in press). This follows his recent publication of Filmmaking for fieldwork: a practical handbook (2020) - both books are with Manchester University Press.
Martha-Cecilia Dietrich is co-director of Filmmaking for Fieldwork - F4F™. She is a regular contributor to our Summer School, specialising in participatory and collaborative filmmaking methods and editing support. Throughout her academic career she has focused on filmmaking as a method of engagement in anthropological research and representation. Her first project explored the role of ‘participatory’ television stations during Venezuela’s Bolivarian Revolution (2007). She then conducted a ‘co-creative’ research project on the role of imagination in the life of female offenders in a UK prison (2009) and her doctoral research explored the memories of perpetrators and victims of the internal armed conflict in Peru through collaborative filmmaking interventions. Currently, Martha is in post-production with a 360-degree documentary film based in Peru and she is co-editing Empirical Art: filmmaking for fieldwork in practice (in press with MUP) with Andy. Martha is Assistant Professor in Media Anthropology at the University of Amsterdam.
Angélica Cabezas Pino began working with us in 2018. She is a freelance documentary filmmaker and tutor on our F4F™ Summer School and online courses. Angelica is also involved in our project work and she is currently making a series of films for United Nations Women. She completed her PhD in Anthropology, Media and Performance at the University of Manchester in 2018. Her thesis explored the impact of HIV stigma in Chile using arts-based and collaborative methods. This is My Face (2018) her PhD documentary was shortlisted for the 2019 Richard Werbner award by the Royal Anthropological Institute. Angélica studied documentary filmmaking at the International School of Cinema in Cuba, and did and MPhil degree at the Granada Centre for Visual Anthropology. Prior to this, she worked as researcher and field producer in Chile for more than 8 years. She is now completing a new film exploring the challenges faced by women artists with experiences of displacement in Manchester, a project sponsored by the Lottery fund.
Jón Bjarki Magnússon joined F4F in 2019 and he is currently available for project work. He is an anthropological filmmaker, with a background in journalism and poetry. His previous work includes award-winning journalism on the conditions of refugees and asylum-seekers in Iceland, a book of poetry and a short film on friendship in cyberspace, Even Asteroids Are Not Alone (2018), which was awarded the Royal Anthropological Institute & Marsh Short Film Prize for ‘most outstanding short film on social, cultural and biological anthropology or archaeology’ in 2019. Jón Bjarki studied creative writing at the University of Iceland and received his MA in Visual and Media Anthropology from Freie Universität, Berlin, in 2018. He is currently distributing his first feature-length documentary, Half Elf, co-produced by F4F's Andy Lawrence and featured on our projects page. Jón Bjarki is also the founder of SKAK BÍÓFILM, a small Icelandic production company dedicated to making anthropological and artistic films. He shares his base between Athens, Berlin and Reykjavík.
Olaf Lawrence splits his time between bases in Cornwall, London and Amsterdam. He joined F4F for work experience in 2019 when he provided valuable assistance on our annual Summer School. He is now working on F4F Projects, notably with international relations and LSE scholar, Professor William A. Callahan, to remix his film Great Walls (2021). Their work has helped to broaden the appeal of international politics to younger audiences. Olaf is passionate about the ocean, eco-futures, documentary filmmaking, vintage fashion, skateboarding, surfing and music. He works in both digital and analogue formats which he mixes with expert drone work, GoPro and SFX, contributing to film art for DJ Tommy 2000, Machine A and Hyperbeast, amongst others. Congratulations to Olaf who recently won at Hawaii International Film Festival (HIFF) in the Environmental Shorts competition with his documentary Green Ocean Gold and for graduating from Falmouth University with a first-class honours degree in Film and Television.