Paloma Yáñez Serrano

Paloma is an independent ethnographic filmmaker and social anthropologist interested in the methods of adaptation humans develop to address changing environment, technology and political conflicts. She has been working for seven years making films and research projects in Congo, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Spain, Brazil and Mexico. In parallel, she has worked as a facilitator of text and mix-media interactive workshops with children and adults. She is currently doing a PhD in visual anthropology at the University of Manchester studying people’s adaptation to industrial agriculture and changing landscape in the south of Spain.​

Eduard Vasile

Eduard is a Doctoral Research at the Grenada Centre for Visual Anthropology, Manchester University and works at the interference between neuroscience, visual anthropology and art. His main area of interest is how visual elements, such as images and visualisations, used in Tibetan Buddhist meditation practices affect the consciousness and the brain. Eduard specialises in experimental filmmaking as a means of exploring the link between consciousness and the visual in anthropology and neuroscience.

Ian Costabile

Ian Costabile is a composer and sound artist residing in the UK since 2009. He is currently based at the University of Liverpool undertaking an AHRC funded practice-based research. Ian focuses his work on interactive sound spaces, particularly through spatial music, site-specific composition, three-dimensional soundscapes and sensor-based interactive media. He was a participant in the 1st VRN residency and became part of the organisation team in the 2nd edition. Since then he has been collaborating with other VRN members and challenging the frontiers between the visual and the sonic through 'sound graffiti' explorations.

www.iancostabile.com

Alexander Martin

An independent film-maker, videographer and musician from Derby, UK, Alexander studied International Development and later Visual Anthropology at the University of Manchester’s Granada Centre. As of 2016 he has been living and working in Cuernavaca, Mexico, where he produces documentary film projects alongside grassroots humanitarian collectives. His past work has included the production of educational and staff training resources on the subject of child sexual exploitation in the UK.

Clara Kleininger

Clara studied anthropology, video and film at the University of Vienna, in Mexico City as well as at the Granada Centre for Visual Anthropology in Manchester. She has since filmed documentaries around the world, from Moldavia to Brazil. For the past four years, she has been living and working in Poland, teaching film and photography, has recently finished the documentary film course at the Wajda Film School and is now directing a film project in co-production with the Polish Film Institute.

Umberto Cao

Umberto Cao has just achieved a joint PhD in Social Anthropology and Ethnology at the University of Milano Bicocca and École des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales. Graduated in Medical Anthropology at EHESS, he has worked several years in the educational cooperation field. He eventually addressed his interest to visual anthropology, with photo and video projects on contemporary murals, in special collaboration with the artists CRISA and Massimo Congiu. The first documentary he co-directed - Nodas. Launeddas at the time of crisis - has been officially selected in numerous international film festivals, such as the 2015 edition of the PriMed – International Festival of Mediterranean Documentary and Reportage and the 15th Royal Anthropological Institute Film Festival. He is now shooting a new ethnographic film on a civil resistance movement from Chiapas, Mexico. He was a participant of the 2019 VRN Residency and he is now delighted to have become a member of the VRN Team.

João Meirinhos

João is a filmmaker and an ethnographic researcher from Lisbon. Following his BA in cinema and social sciences he began collaborating with a multitude of socially engaged organizations that focus on self affirmation, sustainability and environmental awareness; using audiovisual tools to trigger cultural exchange and mediate dialogue between people. From 2010 onward João started his connection with the 'Cinéma du Désert' project: a solar powered mobile cinema that has taken him by land screening films for free along West Africa and Central Asia. Further on, his MA studies in visual anthropology at the University of Manchester led him to undertake fieldwork in the Peruvian Amazon to study the growing popularity of 'spiritual tourism' and Ayahuasca based neo-shamanism and cemented his passion for storytelling through visual art. Ever since 2016 João has been back to Lisbon but is still based on the road working as a freelance cinematographer and performer and director, creative producer of Filmes Sombra.

www.vimeo.com/joaomrmeirinhos
www.cinemadudesert.org  

Benjamin Llorens Rocamora

Benjamin has a history degree from the University of Alicante but following his passion he became an autodidact audiovisual producer. He currently lives in the UK where he works as a freelance filmmaker and a sound recordist for the Big Tree Collective since 2015, being involved in film productions in Congo,  Lebanon, Brazil, Mexico, Spain, Norway and UK. He is currently, the co-director of two Big Tree Collective projects: “The end of an era” where he explores the representation of workers in the fossil fuel industry and the significance that climate change has in their jobs. And “Elegidas”, a film about woman working in the agro-industrial complex of el Ejido (Spain), the biggest concentration of greenhouses in Europe. At the VRN Residency-Conference he will be in charge of his other passion: The food. Providing a catering based in local products, fair-trade relations and low carbon emissions.

Karin Leivategija

Karin Leivategija is a visual anthropologist and museum curator based in Estonia. After obtaining MA degree in Granada Centre for Visual Anthropology at the University of Manchester she has been working as a researcher and curator in Estonian National Museum and is a program team member of Tartu World Film Festival. Her research interests involve post-socialist youth, urban participation and contemporary night studies.  

VRN 2020 Organisers: Paloma Yáñez Serrano, Benjamin Llorens, Eduard Vasile, Clara Kleininger, Ian Costabile, Alexander Martin, João Meirinhos, Umberto Cao, Karin Leivategija, David Johnson.
VRN 2019 Organisers: Paloma Yáñez Serrano, Benjamin Llorens, Eduard Vasile, Lana Askari, Stefania Villa, Alastair Lomas, Alexander Pegge, Anna Pozzali, Clara Kleininger,  Amber Kale, Jess Robins, Ian Costabile.
VRN 2018 Organisers: Paloma Yáñez Serrano, Eduard Vasile, Pavel Prokopic.