Sarah Pucill is a London-based film artist. Her work is distributed by LUX, London and , Paris. She is a Reader at University of Westminster. Central to her work is "a concern with mortality and the materiality of the filmmaking process". Much of her work appears within the restrictions of domestic spaces. In her "explorations of the animate and inanimate, her work probes a journey between mirror and surface".
Career
Pucill studied in London at the Slade School of Fine Art. You Be Mother, was Pucill's first film. It won awards for Best Innovation, Atlanta, 1995; and Best Experimental Film, Oberhausen, 1991. In 2011, it was exhibited in 'Moving Portraits' at the De La Warr Pavilion, Bexhill, Sussex, and in 2004 at at Tate Britain. The 1990s saw the emergence of Pucill’s particular artistic vision in experimental film, and her work has appeared internationally in both galleries and cinemas. Retrospective screenings including ‘A History of Artists Film and Video’ have been held at BFI Southbank in 2011, to commemorate 50 years since Maya Deren's death. Pucill's work was included in 'Assembly: A survey of recent artists’ film and video in Britain 2008–2013' at Tate Britain, 2014. Her 2010 film, Phantom Rhapsody was shown at the Edinburgh International Film Festival, and at the Paris, and at the Tate Britain, Millennium Film, Anthology Film Archives, New York, , Toronto. The film examines the phantom's appearance and disappearance in relation to the "present/absent dynamic of visible lesbian sexuality" in both the history of cinema and art history. As of 2014, her most recent film is Magic Mirror, which was funded by Arts Council England, and is published as a DVD by . Magic Mirror examines the word and image connections in Claude Cahun’s writing from her book through a re-staging of her photographs. Magic Mirror, which is "part essay, part film poem", seeks to explore the links between Cahun’s photographs and her writings. The film premiered at Tate Modern in April 2013, and was shown at the Institute of Contemporary Arts. Her films have been screened at numerous international film festivals, including: the BFI London Film Festival, the International Short Film Festival Oberhausen, the Ann Arbor Film Festival, , Berlinale and the Montréal Festival of New Cinema. Television broadcasts of her films include: BSB TV Australia, Carlton Television, and Granada TV. She has been teaching at the University of Westminster since 2000 where she is currently a Reader and where she received a PhD in 2014.
