2024
• October 2024 The Swimming Diaries (2024) is selected for two more film markets in addition to Visions du Reel - Ji.hlava Documentary Festival, Czech Republic, and AGORA film market, Thessaloniki Film Festival, Greece
• October 2024 The Swimming Diaries is Official Selection at Kerry International Film Festival, Ireland
• September 2024 The Ghost Empire trilogy of films (Belize/Singapore/Cyprus) is available to watch at one of the world leading educational platforms ProQuest
• August 23rd 2024 - Water Holds Me Like A Lover - a film installation concert, a collaboration between myself and composer Donna McKevitt, which takes place at the Ramsgate WW2 tunnels for the Festival of Sound. This immersive film concert event will bring together live music from tThe Swimming Diaries (2024) soundtrack album, composed by McKevitt, as well as tracks from her earlier album, Translucence, based on Derek Jarman's writings. I've created a reimagined film installation with film excerpts from The Swimming Diaries (2024) film, and footage of Jarman's garden at Dungeness, which will be projected into the tunnels leading to the sea. Music will be performed by Donna McKevitt and sopranos Penelope Appleyard and Clare Stewart, both members of the critically acclaimed vocal ensemble Apollo 5, together with cellist Rosie Banks-Francis. There will be a Q & A after the event. Water Holds Me Like A Lover tickets here. This is a SOLD OUT event with extra standing tickets released.
• June 2024 The Swimming Diaries film is presented on BBC Radio 3 Night Tracks 'Music for a Darkling Hour' and the song, Go the Limits, from the film soundtrack is played. Listen back on the link at 15 minutes. The Swimming Diaries soundtrack album is launched this month by Dharma Records.
• May 2024 I have signed with Utopia Docs who will distribute the Ghost Empire series of films to US universities and worldwide.
• May 2024 The first single from The Swimming Diaries soundtrack album is released - Go to the Limits by Donna McKevitt. The music video which I made for the track is here
• April 28th 2024 Ghost Empire § Belize screening and Director's Q & A at Leeds Royal Armouries in association with Leeds Queer Film Festival and Forgotten Battles series
• April 2024 The Swimming Diaries (2024) is selected for Visions du Reel marketplace VdR marketplace
• 2024 The Swimming Diaries (2024) launches to a fantastic audience response, the World premiere takes place at the Dublin International Film Festival DIFF
The film is now listed on MUBI and this is an article I wrote on the making of the film for RTE Culture.
There was discussion and music from the film was played on RTE Lyric FM Movies and Musicals. The film has been reviewed The Irish Times and on Letterboxd.
For more images check out my Instagram
2023
• 2023 I am delighted to be the recipient of the Arts Council of Ireland Reel Art Award and will be making a feature length docufiction film of my book The Swimming Diaries during 2023. See some images from the film here and watch this space!
• September 2023 screenings of Tybyra and the Harlequin (2022): Official Selection at NewFilmmakers New York, following a private screening at the Consul General in Rio de Janeiro in June
• July 2023 Ghost Empire § Belize (2021) is the winner of an Impact DOCS Award of Recognition for Documentary Feature/LGBTQ+ Film for Social Change
• March 2023 Ghost Empire § Belize is Official Selection at NewFilmmakersNY from March 21st - April 3rd. Watch the film for free at NewFilmakersNY. Ghost Empire § Singapore also screened with NewFilmmakersNY at Anthology Film Archives, New York in 2016.
• February 2023 Ghost Empire § Cyprus is screening at Nottingham University for LGBTQ+ History month on Friday 3 February at 6pm, Humanities Department
• January 2023 As filmmaker in residence at the University of Sussex, Centre for World Environmental History this is a new commissioned film I have written and directed on colonialism, eugenics and botany and the life of cytologist Janaki Ammal, for an exhibition at the Indian Museum of Calcutta Science, Humanism and the Making of Modern India 'Janaki Ammal and the Genetical Society' (2023, 13')
2022
• December 2022 Ghost Empire § Belize is Official Selection at London Lift-Off film Festival. You can watch it in the Feature Films section online here.
• December 2022 Tybyra and the Harlequin Tybyra and the Harlequin (2022, 34 mins) launches at the Museum of Modern Art, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil on December 1st at the Cinemateca, including panel discussion, during my stay in Rio. A dance docufiction I have written and directed during my British council artist in residency, the film is about rights of nature, colonialism and LGBTQ+ issues, featuring trans dance performance artist Omba Yiara, Directors of Photography Rai do Vale and Isabella Moriconi, music by Billy Kenrick, produced by Instituto MESA and supported by the British Council.
• August 2022 Ghost Empire § Belize is Official Selection at Irish Film London Festival's Irish Film From Home online screening
• June 2022 Ghost Empire § Belize is Official Selection at Flickfair Film Festival, L.A. and will be available to watch online throughout the month of June here
• April 2022 Delighted to announce that I am a British Council artist in residence with Instituto Mesa in Brazil. I will be giving a talk on 20th June as part of this residency at Fluminense Federal University, Rio de Janeiro.
• April 2022 Ghost Empire § Belize is Official Selection at Catalyst International Film Festival Limerick
• March 2022 Ghost Empire § Belize is Official Selection at CAMRA Screening Scholarship Media Festival at University of Pennsylvania, and panel discussion 'Ecologies and Empire'
• I've been away filming a new film in the series, Ghost Empire § Maurice (2023), filming at the Supreme Court in Mauritius, meeting activists from two constitutional challenges as well as meeting with Chagos islanders who have taken their case to the International Court of Justice.
• March 2022 Ghost Empire § Belize Official Selection at Liberation Docfest Bangladesh
• February 2022 Ghost Empire § Cyprus screening and panel discussion at Nottingham University
2021
• Ghost Empire § Belize (2021) has won two IndieFEST Awards - an Award of Recognition (Documentary Feature) and an Award of Merit (Liberation/Social Justice/Protest)
• September 2021 FNI podcast interview Film Network Ireland Wrapchat
• September 2021 Ghost Empire § Belize will premiere at the IFI Irish Film Institute Documentary Festival on 23 September at 20.30 in the cinema and 18.00 online.
• May 2021 Listen to this Quarantini podcast where I discuss my work including The Cytokine Storms and Ghost Empire
• February 2021 View The Cytokine Storms (2020, 38 mins) hosted by Circa art magazine and read alongside it my new essay on the genesis of the film
• January 2021 I will be giving a talk about my work and screening my new film, The Cytokine Storms (2020) at an online Zoom seminar at Sussex University, CWEH, Centre for World Environmental History on Friday 29th January 2021
• Pleased to announce my new film The Cytokine Storms (2020, 38 mins) You can view the full-length film here for a limited time The Cytokine Storms (2020). A lyrical essay film, it explores the colonial echoes of the U.K. government response to the COVID-19 pandemic, looking at colonial responses to the Irish and Indian Famines, laissez-faire economics and indifference to marginalised lives. It interweaves contemporary personal and geopolitical events. With thanks to the Arts Council for a COVID-19 Award. You can view the trailer here. The film will be hosted by CIRCA and be screened at a forthcoming talk at Sussex University CWEH.
• Very pleased to announce that I have been awarded a Professional Development grant by the Arts Council. I will be attending Dream School and using analysis of my own dreams to develop an autobiographical screenplay with surreal elements.
2020
• June 2020 A personal essay on Derek Jarman's garden - on flowers, mortality and Section 28 - for IMMA Irish Museum of Modern Art magazine, Dublin Derek Jarman's Garden by Susan Thomson
• June 2020 Delighted to announce that I have been awarded a Covid grant from the Arts Council of Ireland. I'll be making a new essay film for this, relating to the echoes of colonialism in the U.K. government's handling of the pandemic, using video from my archive together with new footage. Stay tuned. It will be screened first on Northern Visions TV later this year!
• 26 June 2020 Ghost Empire § Cyprus screens at (virtual) Queer Asia Film Festival, charities screening, London and I will be giving a live online talk about Ghost Empire on Friday 26 June at 6pm, in conversation with Dr. Marsha Henry of LSE, and Victoria Vasey, Legal Director at HDT. Please tune in! Register at Queer Asia and a link to the event will be sent via email.
• You can follow my #SocialDistancingMixtape
I'll be putting films and writing online, old and new work, most of which hasn't been previously available online. Take a trip through LGBTQ+ rights, Windrush tunnels, fire, British exceptionalism, forbidden cities and more.
Stay safe everyone.
• Ghost Empire § Singapore + interview with Director will be shown Saturday 7th March 22.35 and Sunday 8th March 22.15 on NVTV.
Ghost Empire § Cyprus + interview with Director will be shown on NVTV, Northern Visions TV, Belfast, Saturday 29th February 22.45 and Sunday 1st March 23.40
Watch here or Freeview 7 or Virgin Channel 159 NVTV schedule
And I'll be doing a TV interview in May which will be shown later in the year.
• February 2020 my essay on Derek Jarman, filmmaker and queer activist, and response to the retrospective at IMMA, Dublin here
• January 2020 As Others see Us - review of the Array Collective at Jerwood Arts in London in the Visual Artists' News Sheet
2019
• December 2019 Forbidden City (2019, 35 minutes, dir. Susan Thomson) is a short experimental documentary essay, filmed in Wunsdorf, just outside Berlin, Germany. This area was used over the course of the last century, as a POW camp in the First World War, as a place for Nazi communications in the bunkers there during the Second World War, and as the so-called Forbidden City after the construction of the Berlin wall. In a poetic monologue, the narrator takes a journey back to the Soviet forbidden city as well as the fields which were formerly inhabited by prisoners of war, and features their archival voices and songs on the soundtrack, from the Lautarchiv at Humboldt University. The narrator also focuses on the Irish brigade who trained in the camp during WW1, planning an Irish uprising against the British colonial empire, and the characters of Roger Casement and his translator, Jospeh Zerhusen. Casement was consequently tried the following year for treason at the Old Bailey in London. His so-called 'Black Diaries' which detailed his homosexual encounters were circulated and used to discredit him, and he was subsequently executed. The film evokes the idea of imprisonment, both at various times over the course of the last century, and in many places now. With the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin wall, the film has an added relevance. View the trailer here
• January 2019 Read my article on Violence and Reconciliation in film and artists' moving image in Circa magazine in a series of three linked essays:
Part 1 looks at 'The Troubles' through Donal Foreman's film, The Image You Missed (2018) which explores the work of Arthur MacCaig, Foreman's father and documentary maker here
Part 2 proposes a politics of film restoration and involves a close reading of Chick Strand's Soft Fiction (1978) within the context of the MeToo movement here
Part 3 examines the feminist revolution in Northern Syria and the ICA's In formation series here
2018
• Screening - Thursday 29 November 2018 6-8pm: screening of Ghost Empire § Singapore and Director's Q & A at RPC international law firm, London, with RPC RAIN Inclusion and Diversity LGBT+ Network & prosecco reception. Images from RPC evening here.
Ghost Empire § Singapore will also be screened at the Bristol RPC office on Thursday 6 December 2018
• August 2018 Editors' pick Circa art magazine
• July 2018 Read my article on art, monsters and cyborgs in IADT degree show at Circa art magazine
• January 2018 Read my article on Body Language, a dance installation by David Bolger and Christopher Ash at the RHA Dublin, at Circa art magazine
2017
• Delighted to announce that I have signed with WME and that my literary agent is Simon Trewin at WME
William Morris Endeavour Entertainment
100 New Oxford Street
London WC1 1DR
STrewin@wmeentertainment.com
I'm currently working on a novel which takes Roger Casement's trial for treason as its subject in a collage of forms, including narratives, photographs, letters and other abstract elements.
• Tuesday November 28: screening of Ghost Empire § Singapore at Yale NUS Singapore
• PODCAST Please have a listen to this podcast of the talk I gave at INIVA on the Ghost Empire trilogy, questioned by Sunil Gupta
• Thursday Nov 2: Ghost Empire talk at Stuart Hall Library, INIVA, London & screening of Ghost Empire § Cyprus Institute of International Visual Arts INIVA as part of ‘Virtualities’ series.
• TV INTERVIEW Watch Ghost Empire § Cyprus + interview with me at Tales from the Margins
• July 2017 Read my article on interactive literature at DIT degree show, Luke McLaughlin's The Catcher in the Rye at Circa art magazine
• July 2017 TALES FROM THE MARGINS, a film programme on Latest TV/LGBT+ TV every Monday at 9pm UK time @LatestTVBtn / @latestlgbtplus, available on Freeview in the Brighton/Hove area, via online livestreaming at TALES FROM THE MARGIN The Latest TV TALES FROM THE MARGINS The Latest TV hosted by Rainer Schulze.
Monday 17th July at 9pm (repeated Friday
21st at 9pm) Tonight's programme: Susan Thomson's documentary GHOST EMPIRE §
CYPRUS, plus interview with Susan Thomson.
Next week Monday 24th July: (repeated Friday 28th at 9pm) the second part
of Susan's trilogy: GHOST EMPIRE § SINGAPORE
• June 16th /17th: screening of Ghost Empire § Singapore with Q&A at Queer Asia Film Festival at SOAS, School of Oriental and African Studies, London.
- 23.02.17. Ghost Empire § Singapore/Cyprus screens at Edinburgh University. Supported by LGBT Staff Network, with Director's Q&A.
- 24.02.17. Ghost Empire § Cyprus screens at the Scottish Government, Victoria Quay, Edinburgh, with Director's Q&A.
2016
• August 10th: Ghost Empire § Singapore screening at Anthology Film Archives NYC. Official Selection with NewFilmmakers NY screened as an AltFest Special Program
• August 10th: Ghost Empire § Singapore screening at Anthology Film Archives NYC. Official Selection with NewFilmmakers NY screened as an AltFest Special Program
• 2016 Read my article on the 'Design and Violence' exhibition, at the Science Museum, Dublin, a co-production with MoMA, New York, at Circa art magazine
• June 29th: Dublin Castle Ghost Empire § Cyprus screening & lecture: Roger Casement, Human Rights and Missing films. 100 year Anniversary of Roger Casement's 1916 sentencing.
• June 29th: Dublin Castle Ghost Empire § Cyprus screening & lecture: Roger Casement, Human Rights and Missing films. 100 year Anniversary of Roger Casement's 1916 sentencing.
• May 25-29: Official Selection Kashish 7th Mumbai International Queer Film Festival, India. More info here.
• 2016
Official Selection Culture Unplugged Film Festival (by invitation) watch Ghost Empire § Cyprus online.
2015
• September:
Official Selection MICGénero, Mexico City. Ghost Empire § Singapore/ Ghost Empire § Cyprus double-screening.
• Nomination for Best International Film, screenings at Cinemex Reforma.
• October 3rd: Official Selection in competition at World of Film International Festival, CCA Glasgow, Scotland.
• September: Official Selection Unspoken Human Rights Film Festival, Utica, New
York.
2014
• Official Selection Northern Cyprus Film Festival, EMAA European Mediterranean
Arts Association, Nicosia, Cyprus.
• Director of Photography of ‘Gympressive’ - longlisted for British Comedy Award.
2013
• Oct 11th – Dec 23rd: Upending Troubling Ireland group exhibition at Limerick City art
gallery, Ireland.
• Contributions from Ghost Empire within Kaleidoscope report ‘Speaking
Out’ to Commonwealth Heads of Government, Sri Lanka on LGBT
issues.