Gaza, December 2023. A confrontation with a disturbing photograph on social media triggers questions about what it means to be an onlooker. “What am I looking at?” you had said out loud. The strangeness of the theatrical mise-en-scène –the foreground illuminated by the lamp, the men in the berm, the soldiers in the middle distance and the ghostly apartment blocks– had reminded you of an image from a film you might have seen.

Miranda Pennell is a London-based artist-filmmaker exploring the legacies of imperialism through British state archive images. Her award-winning films, screened internationally, emphasise the role of the imagination in the interpretation of historical documents. Originally trained as a dancer, she transitioned to filmmaking, earning an MA in Visual Anthropology from Goldsmiths and a PhD from the University of Westminster. Selected screenings include retrospectives at major festivals, and she currently leads a course on archival filmmaking at UCL's Open City Documentary Festival.