Post-screening discussion with Shireen Seno, director of Big Boy (2013) at Cample Line

Lecturer in Film Studies Dr Philippa Lovatt will be taking part in a discussion with director Shireen Seno about her film Big Boy (Philippines, 2013) this weekend (Sunday 31 January). They will discuss Big Boy, archival research, family histories, sound, birds, and much more!

An experimental portrait of a family amidst change, Big Boy is photographer and filmmaker Shireen Seno’s lovingly lo-fi, Super 8 tale of a young boy pressured by his family to ‘grow’. Set in the 1950s on the Island of Mindoro in the Philippines, after the American occupation, the film tells the story of Julio and his family’s many interventions to make him grow as physically tall as possible in their pursuit of a better life. By blending a mix of live and ‘found’ sounds and displacing real time sound and image in the film, Shireen evokes the recall of memories in her debut film, which won Best First Film at the Festival de Cine Lima Independiente in 2013. 

As well as being Co-Director of the Centre for Screen Cultures in the Department of Film Studies, and Director of Impact, Philippa is a specialist in Southeast Asian film and artists' moving image. She is currently writing a monograph on the politics of sound and listening in artists’ film and is also working on an oral history project with Jasmine Nadua Trice: “Parallel Practices: Oral Histories of Southeast Asian Film and Video Cultures.” She has edited two dossiers for Journal of Cinema and Media Studies (“Theorizing Region: Film and Video Cultures in Southeast Asia” co-edited with Trice) and Screen (“Tracing the Anthropocene in Southeast Asian Film and Artists' Moving Image” with Graiwoot Chulphongsathorn) both forthcoming in 2021.

There will be a communal viewing of the film via the Cample Line Gallery website on Saturday 30 January at 6.30pm; Big Boy will then be available to watch (in the UK only) until 1 February. Philippa and Shireen will be in conversation on Sunday 31 January at 1pm via Zoom (available worldwide). Find out more, watch a trailer for Big Boy and register for the event via the Cample Line website.