FESTIVAL ORGANIZERS
Dave Griffiths
Film Festival Curator
Dave is a Manchester-based artist, researcher, curator and teacher. His work explores photographic images as a means to celebrate and navigate history, troubled places, and material cultures. He has exhibited his work internationally in museums, festivals and galleries such as Sandao Gallery, Xiamen (2014) and Manchester Science Festival (2017). Between 1997 and 2000, he was part of the rock/performance collective Whitecube. He has also co-curated the major exhibition UnSpooling – Artists and Cinema at Cornerhouse in 2010. Currently, he is researching microfilm and is a senior lecturer at Manchester School of Art. For more information visit www.davegriffiths.info/blog/
Photograph by Simon Beckmann https://www.simonbeckmann.com/
Sally O’Reilly
Film Festival Curator
Sally writes and makes videos and performances, sometimes collaboratively, sometimes alone. Recent projects include Where They Gather, a spoken word and music album with Kit Downes (October House Records, 2022), Three Scoop Complicator, a video project for Mattflix (2021) and The Open Arms, an online pub (2019-ongoing). Works of fiction include the novella The Ambivalents (Cabinet, 2017), the novel Crude (Eros, 2016) and the libretto for the opera The Virtues of Things (Royal Opera, Aldeburgh Music, Opera North, 2015). For more information, visit www.sallyoreilly.org.uk
Rebekka Cartwright
Film Festival Social Media
Rebekka runs social media for the SFF and for the Swedenborg Society. Her background is in cinema, gallery and theatre administration and she has worked at a number of UK venues including the National Theatre, London, The Lowry, Salford and HOME, Manchester.
Simran Hussain
Film Festival Coordinator
Simran has been working as the festival coordinator of the Swedenborg Film Festival since 2022, and is a publishing and events assistant at the Swedenborg Society. She has recently completed a BA in Linguistics at University College London.
Stephen McNeilly
Festival Director
Stephen is responsible for setting up the Swedenborg Film Festival in 2010. He is also the Society’s Executive and Museum Director, and runs the cultural programme at Swedenborg house. In addition to organising several film seasons, including the works of Robert Bresson, Ingmar Bergman, Jim Jarmusch and David McKee, he is also the series editor of the Swedenborg Review, a cultural broadsheet featuring articles on literary and artistic activities, the Swedenborg Archive Series, the Journal of the Swedenborg Society and the forthcoming Collected Works of Emanuel Swedenborg.
Alex Murray
Technical Director
Alex is the Swedenborg Society’s Librarian and Archivist but also doubles up as the on-site A/V co-ordinator. Alex has a broad background in events management, logistics, planning and promotion having run many experimental music nights throughout the years in various cities around the UK. He has also contributed his A/V knowledge to a large number of events at Swedenborg House including many of the talks, screenings and performances the Swedenborg Society has hosted.
Anya Reeve
Festival Assistant
Anya is excited to be joining the Swedenborg Film Festival as an assistant this year. She is a publishing, gallery and events assistant at the Swedenborg Society—so plenty to keep her on her toes! Prior to joining the Society, Anya completed a BA in English Language and Literature and an MSt in Literature 1900-Present at the University of Oxford. She has had essays published in The Modernist Review and The Oxonian Review, and will have two creative prose pieces published in Snow lit rev, no. 12 (upcoming spring 2024).