Interview between RedCut and Patricia Francis

I am an independent filmmaker who is growing increasingly impatient with what I consider to be a continued perpetuation of social injustice. I use my films to encourage inquiry into what I perceive to be a social inequity that debilitates, undermines and injures the potential of a thriving inclusive society.  I offer conversation and constructive debate with anyone wishing to engage in my endeavour to find alternative narratives that achieves social and economic parity. My career in the media began at BBC Radio Nottingham as a researcher, after winning a studentship place at university. I was soon offered broadcast journalist opportunities and later moved into television production. My television career includes working in regional news and current affairs. I produced a weekly consumer affairs segment. After completing my degree, I moved first to Television Centre, and then to Birmingham, where I worked on BBC1 and BBC2 programmes. In 2012 I set up Syncopate Media an independent production company and was later awarded funding for my films ‘Many Rivers To Cross’ and ‘Making Waves’. Both spoke of a Black experience in Britain. I have also been commissioned to produce a range of films for BBC Inside Out, BBC Sunday Politics and for CBBC. My agitation with the perpetual social, racial and gender inequality informs my postgraduate research at Nottingham Trent University which aims to articulate the silencing of women’s voices through a practice-based prism. My research focuses on women engaged in dissenting activities. It spills into my personal life, as I incorporate academic texts into a contemporary reflection of our socio-political present, and deconstruct racist and sexist ideological narratives, attempting to conceive, instead, an alternative ‘language’ that constructs a social philosophy embracing difference and appreciating all.

Redcut’s interview with Mehrnoush Alia

Redcut’s interview with Mehrnoush Alia

Mehrnoush Alia is an Iranian filmmaker and playwright.  She received her MFA from Columbia University Film Program and her BA in Film Studies and Comparative Literature from UC Berkeley. Her debut feature, 1001 Frames, premiered at Berlinale 2025 and is the official...

Conversation between Mike Figgis and Mania Akbari, “Part One” 

Conversation between Mike Figgis and Mania Akbari, “Part One” 

Mania: As I was checking my flight seat numbers from London to Venice, my eyes fell upon a tall, muscular man with bright, curly hair and fair skin. I felt like I had seen him somewhere before. After hesitating for a moment, I passed by him, unsure if I was mistaken,...

On the Precarity of Freedom

On the Precarity of Freedom

By Amin Pakparvar Libido can be regarded as the emotional force underlying human expressions of love, originating from an individual's affection toward oneself and subsequently extending to the external world. Loving another person or object represents an expansion of...

Unsettled Reality, Tomorrow’s Imagination

Unsettled Reality, Tomorrow’s Imagination

Markéta Jakešová & Mania Akbari This selection of seven films by young Iranian women filmmakers explores the fragile and shifting nature of contemporary existence through their unique perspectives. With intimate narratives and striking visuals, these works...

Women in the Field of Struggle”: Which Women in Which Field?

Women in the Field of Struggle”: Which Women in Which Field?

By Pegah Pezeshki The following text is based on nine films by Arab women filmmakers under the title "The Place of the Arab Woman in Struggle," written by Pegah Pezeshki. This collection, curated by Giovanni Vimercati, was presented at Cryptofiction. When we think of...

Andrea Luka Zimmerman, a Wayfaring Stranger

Andrea Luka Zimmerman, a Wayfaring Stranger

by Armin Etemadi Andrea Luka Zimmerman’s cinema is basically about the empty and un-narrated spaces between the lines. She puts her finger on outcast human beings of whom no traces can be seen in the media, in history, or in any other marketable material, as though...

Interview with Nina Menkes by Mania Akbari 

Interview with Nina Menkes by Mania Akbari 

Editor: Marketa Jakesova  Considered a cinematic feminist pioneer and one of America’s foremost independent filmmakers, Nina Menkes has shown widely in major international film festivals including multiple premieres at Sundance, the Berlinale, Cannes, Rotterdam,...

There Is So Much I Want to Say

There Is So Much I Want to Say

  by: Markéta Jakešová Introduction Cryptofiction, founded by Mania Akbari, with the curator Giovanni Vimercati, presents a selection of nine diverse films, all created by women directors with a Middle Eastern background that address issues related to Palestine...