Mike Cartmell

My work as a filmmaker is pitched on a terrain demarcated by history (personal and communal), sexuality, and language. Uncertainties surrounding my own origin due to foundlinghood and adoption led to a fascination with ancestry, genealogy, and descent. My filmmaking is concerned with the issue of its/my parentage, and often finds itself up against the problematic of origin/originality: this has much to do with the modes of adaptation I’ve investigated in some of my films, and with the ongoing interest in proper names. I come to filmmaking from a cultural studies/critical theory background and so, not surprisingly, I am very interested in the issue of the relation(s) between the theoretical and the production of art-making. This seems to me a crucial question for contemporary culture (for post-modernism if you will), and however difficult and contradictory the fit(s) found between the two, the articulation of theory and practice remains a site of profound exhilaration and challenge. (Mike Cartmell)