Lydia Beilby

Teaching Fellow: Film, Exhibition & Curation

  • Film, Exhibition & Curation
  • School of Literatures, Languages and Cultures
  • Graduate School

Contact details

Address

Street

50 George Square, University of Edinburgh

City
Post code

Availability

  • I work Monday to Thursday inclusively, and can be reached on these days on email or through Teams

    My office hour is on Tuesday 14.00-15.00, and slots can be booked through Learn

Biography

Background

As a practice based researcher, my work takes the form of experimental filmmaking, and I utilise 8mm and 16mm photochemical film (analogue) to create single-screen and expanded performance pieces. My practice explores the camera apparatus and projection medium as both a performative process, and an embodied extension of the body, and this way of working centralises hand-made, artisanal, co-operative and environmentally sustainable approaches. My work has been shown at Oberhausen, Berwick Film & Media Arts Festival, Alchemy Film & Arts, BFI Southbank and Stills Gallery, Edinburgh, amongst others.

I am interested in creative ways of imparting knowledge around analogue processes, small-gauge filmmaking and radical archiving approaches, and to this end collaborate widely on projects with academic institutions, archives, collectives and communities. I co-founded artists' collective Screen Bandita, and established Scotland's first artist run film lab, Labo Spirale, with the aim to support and foster the work of practitioners experimenting with artisanal and analogue processes.

As a Curator, I consistently held roles with Edinburgh International Film Festival between 2009-2024. Firstly, as head of the Short Film Section, and between 2019-2024 as programmer of the prestigious Black Box experimental strand, with the remit of bringing together in dialogue short and feature-length experimental and artists’ film from around the world. I have been an awarding Jury member for International Film Festivals including Uppsala, Krakow, Vienna, Montreal and Kosovo, and participated in the selection process for BAFTA Scotland on a number of occasions.

As a recognised authority on Photochemical processes and practices, I am frequently approached to undertake bespoke training, consultation or mentorship on areas such as apparatus and cinematography, print handling, projection and archival processes. Recent and long-term collaborators include BFI, National Library of Scotland, Alchemy Film & Arts, not/nowhere and Historic Environment Scotland.

Present/ continuing projects:

  • Chapter, co-authored with Dr Sana Bilgrami: Politics, poetry and process: photochemical filmmaking as a radical archival practice. In Shaking the Archives (Palgrave Macmillan, upcoming 2026)
  • Cinema-making Me’n’us: recipes for emancipatory pedagogical practice. Collaborative research project with colleagues from Leeds University,Teeside University and Hyde Park Picturehouse (ongoing)
  • Creative Methods and Creative Resistance: exploring 16mm Experimental Film Practices (ongoing). A series of collaborative experiments between the School of Performance and Cultural Industries (University of Leeds) and Hyde Park Picture House. Output: 16mm film and Zine Publication
  • Labo Spirale: Scotland's first artist run film lab operates peripatetically across discursive screening opportunities and practical, photochemical workshops (including cinematography and darkroom work)
  • Expanding Cinema: Research Cluster with colleagues across University of Edinburgh and Edinburgh College of Art

Postgraduate teaching

Lydia teaches across the Film, Exhibition & Curation MSc Programme

Research summary

  • Experimental film + artists' moving image 
  • Small gauge filmmaking practice as political resistance
  • DIY/ collective forms of organising, producing and disseminating moving image
  • Handmade film processes (in relation to shooting, hand-processing and projecting work)
  • Film as performance: including live and expanded cinema
  • Radical and de-centralised archiving techniques
  • Found film, repurposed archive materials and ephemera
  • Film and feminism
  • Creative community engagement (collaborative archive making and filmmaking)
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