On 28th January 2025, we were lucky enough to attend the second Rosewell Lecture of the Academic year, ‘Women in Contemporary Cinema of Migration’ given by Dr Valentina Ippolito. Dr Ippolito is a scholar in cinema of migration, award-winning filmmaker, Senior Lecturer in Filmmaking and Deputy Director for the Centre for Practice Research in the Arts at Kingston University. Her work, focusing on the ethical and poetic representation of marginalised communities and minorities through cinema, has gained her an internationally recognised profile in the documentary filmmaking community, so it was a real honour to have attended her lecture!
Initially, we were encouraged to discuss our understanding of migration, what are the reasons behind migration, and how it affects people, especially women. Dr. Ippolito’s engaging and interactive approach to exploring such a broad and thought-provoking topic made the lecture both insightful and captivating. She shared with us data from UN Women, stating that women constitute almost half of the migrants across the world however they are underrepresented in films and documentaries. Many of these women migrate to escape poverty, gender-based violence, conflict, or to seek better education. She also highlighted how women are subject to systemic vulnerabilities due to forms of discrimination based on gender, race, or migration status. However, migration policies often fail to adequately respond to the specific needs and rights of women.
We then moved on to look at three examples of cinema of migration. In all three examples, Dr Ippolito broke down how each plot depicted the women in the story as ‘lost souls with no sense of direction’, a harmful stereotype which is often apparent films of migration written by men.
This is when Dr. Ippolito introduced the concept of Accented Cinema, which uses key stylistic approaches to authentically tell cultural stories and represent the voices it portrays. She focused specifically on female filmmakers whose films empower women’s voices and challenge stereotypes by allowing them to tell their own stories. Accented filmmakers use techniques such as first-person narratives, representation of marginalised voices, iconography of the motherland, themes of mobility, and experimental styles to authentically communicate one’s story of migration.
Finally, Dr. Ippolito shared her own experience in refugee filmmaking, a key area of her interest. In her most recent film, she interviews an Afghan girl who migrated to Italy as a refugee to seek better education and escape the Taliban after they captured Kabul in 2021. One particularly intriguing point was Dr. Ippolito’s emphasis on digital rights as ‘the key to freedom for migrant women’ enabling them to escape government restrictions and access education. She linked the rise of social media and mobile phone use to the increasing ability of women to share their own stories, further reinforcing that it can be a key to freedom. She demonstrated this in her documentary, allowing the Afghan girl to use her phone to represent herself with filters and stickers, contrasting these self-representations with the interview footage. In response to a question, Dr. Ippolito discussed an ongoing challenge she faced while making the film: ensuring that the Afghan refugee she was interviewing felt as much a part of the process as she did, making it a true collaboration. This further highlighted her commitment to authentically presenting migrant women’s stories.
Overall it was an incredibly interesting and eye-opening lecture. A massive thank you is in order for Lara and Deniz, our Student Heads of Academics, for organising these lectures as well as Dr Valentina Ippolito herself for taking time out of her very busy schedule to come and talk to us!
By Evie (Y13) and Rose (Y12)