Project Description

Phillip Warnell

Portrait of Phillip Warnell

FSC-Radcliffe Fellow 2017-18

Phillip Warnell is an artist-filmmaker, a writer, and the director of the Visible Institute, for research in film and photography, at Kingston University, London. He produces film works and texts exploring a range of philosophical and poetic thematics, also exploring ideas on human-animal relations. His most recent film, The Flying Proletarian (2017), premiered at CPH:DOX, Copenhagen International Documentary Film Festival, in March 2017.

During his fellowship, Warnell is addressing a series of interconnected questions on “animality-cinemality-criminality,” involving engagement with film professionals and researchers relative to screen-based roles and exploring the relationship among appearance, measurement, and typecasting. He is also developing script-based ideas for a planned feature-length film, currently in development, that investigates ideas on misobservation and apparitions of other life-worlds, accessing archival material to inform and incorporate into the project.

Warnell’s film work has been exhibited extensively, including recent screenings at the ICA in London, KW Institute for Contemporary Art, in Berlin, and Tate Modern, in London, as well as in such prestigious film festivals as the Locarno Festival, the New York Film Festival, and the Viennale. Previous exhibitions have included at the Moderna galerija, in Ljubljana, Slovenia; Sharjah Biennial, in United Arab Emirates; and Wellcome Collection, in London. His film Ming of Harlem: Twenty One Storeys in the Air (2014) won the 2014 Georges de Beauregard International Prize at FID International Film Festival Marseille and the 2015 Universities SIC Award at IndieLisboa.

FSC Works

Film Still from Intimate Distances

Intimate Distances

Phillip Warnell, 61 min. (2020)

Intimate Distances presents a bird’s eye view and circuitous return to a crime scene, following legendary street scout Martha Wollner as she casts her eye in a search of encounters with young men at the intersections of Astoria, speculating on whether they might be capable of some future crime, anticipating the potential for dissonance in both real lives and for screen characterization simultaneously. A dynamic exploration of local forces and neighborhood trade politics, this practically real-time film deliberates on cinema’s exploitation of appearances, unlocking casting, and profiling technique. It is supported by the voiced, redacted testimony of an already convicted criminal, on whom the film’s lead character would be based, using fragments from what was actually an unsuccessful audition for another crime film.

Related Posts

FSC-Radcliffe Fellows’ Presentation: Phillip Warnell

February 21, 2018 @ 4:00 pm
Free and open to the public   Animality, Cinemality, Criminality During his fellowship, Phillip...