June 2023
Bad News and accompanying statement has been published in Volume 13.1 of Screenworks, the peer-reviewed online publication of screen media practice research:
“Bad News, by Cecilia Stenbom and Ben Young, a short film developed as part of a wider creative practice research project that seeks to explore role-playing and simulation as an institutional and corporate training device, and how this might be utilised in fiction filmmaking. The film succeeds in capturing the banalities of corporate middle-management, nailing the awkwardness of delivering the bad news of the title in a “sacking scenario” role-play. This original experiment offers a new twist on improvisation, drawing on applied theatre techniques used in drama-based training to create an unscripted narrative short film that combines fiction and documentary, which is a pilot for a feature-length fiction film currently in development.”
February 2023
Parapluie Friday Focus: Cecilia Stenbom
http://parapluieart.com/focus-ceciliastenbom
January 2023
Bad News screens at London Short Film Festival
https://shortfilms.org.uk/films/bad-news/
September 2021
DARK MATTER at WORKPLACE FOUNDATION
https://workplacefoundation.art/exhibitions/89/overview/
Exhibiting artists Catherine Bertola, Cath Campbell, Nina Chua, Joe Clark, Noel Clueit, Claire Dorsett, Peter J. Evans, Parham Ghalamdar, Dean Hughes, Rachel Lancaster, Paul Merrick, Mick Peter, Magnus Quaife, Nicola Singh and Cecilia Stenbom. Works will be presented in a range of media including painting, sculpture, video and works on paper.
January 2021
Develop your Own Creative Practice
Cecilia has received a Develop your Own Creative Practice Award for a focused period to research and experiment with applied theatre techniques. Cecilia will be working in consultation with Alice Boyd and Jacqui Meyler, both actors and co-founders of JUST Drama Based Training, an international facilitator, to inform the development and facilitation roleplay training sessions with actors. The documentation of the sessions will become standalone moving image pieces.
https://www.artscouncil.org.uk/DYCP
September 2020
Interview by Susie Davies for Reel People at Star and Shadow Cinema
https://starandshadow.org.uk/id/5062/
Reel People brings you the stories of non-male, North East-based filmmakers. Learn how they fell in love with film, cultivated their craft and broke the field’s boundaries. Deepen your knowledge, probe your expectations and most importantly, be inspired. This week’s filmmaker is Cecilia Stenbom. With a background in fine art, Cecilia creates award-winning narrative short films which centre around an interest of identity in a world of consumer culture and the media’s role in the everyday. Reel People is presented by Susie Davies, Newcastle University fine art student and aspiring documentary filmmaker. The show is a Micro-Project commissioned by Star and Shadow Cinema and funded by Arts Council England.
March 2020
Rules of Engagement and SYSTEM exhibited at Innsbruck International
http://2020.innsbruckinternational.com/artist/cecilia-stenbom/
Innsbruck International is a contemporary biennial of the arts that invites international artists to make use of Innsbruck’s extraordinary historical and contemporary venues in the presentation of their works of visual art, film, and sound as well as performances and installations.
June 2018
FEATURE EXPANDED
Selected as participant for FEATURE EXPANDED.
20 – 25 June 2018, HOME, Manchester
14 – 18 November 2018, Lo Schermo dell’arte, Florence
Manchester’s brand new cross-art center and Italy’s unique artist film festival unite to present the ground-breaking first European intensive training program for visual artists developing and producing their first feature film.
Spanning six months and two locations, the program combines masterclasses, case studies, workshops, screenings, one-to-one meetings and pitching sessions for directors who are developing their first feature film. Participants will gain essential new skills and the expertise needed to advance their early-stage feature film projects for theatrical distribution and exhibition.
http://www.featureexpanded.com/alumni-2018/
January 2018
National Tour of Screenings & Talks
Press release:
Cecilia Stenbom will showcase her new work, Rules of Engagement (U), alongside a selection of other short films and a Q&A.
Swedish-born artist filmmaker, Cecilia Stenbom will tour her newest piece of work, Rules of Engagement, across five venues in January and February 2018. Venues are as follows: Regent Street Cinema in London; Centre for Contemporary Arts (CCA) in Glasgow; Tyneside Cinema in Newcastle upon Tyne; The Maltings in Berwick upon Tweed, and The Tetley in Leeds. Each venue will showcase a slightly different running order of films, based upon a separate loose theme. Venues will also provide a different Q&A host, local to them, allowing for an insight into Stenbom’s work and life.
Cecilia Stenbom says:
“I’m really interested in the outcome of the Q&A sessions after each of the screenings: to see where they can take us, and also to allow for engagement with the audience.”
Rules of Engagement is a film about belongingness as a human motivating force. Three seemingly unconnected stories explore how every day norms and social etiquette define who belongs and who doesn’t: Jack, the black sheep is attending a family gathering; Robin is trying to integrate into a new social group, and Nadia is failing to blend in with her conservative work colleagues.
Cecilia Stenbom says:
“The idea for Rules of Engagement came out of research into invisible social protocols and how they are played out in everyday situations. I am interested in the idea of ritualised communication wherein communication – the construction of a symbolic reality – represents, maintains, adapts, and shares the beliefs of a society, group or family constellation, particularly in terms of sharing, participation, association, and fellowship.”
This tour has been supported by Arts Council England through Grants for the Arts. Cecilia Stenbom would like to thank the following organisations who have supported the production of individual works: Newcastle University Institute for Creative Arts Practice, Active Northumberland, Northern Film & Media, Berwick Visual Arts, Berwick Film & Media Arts Festival, Creative England.
Please see each individual venue’s website for more information.
Tour dates are as follows:
Wednesday 31st January, 7:30pm, Regent Street Cinema London
https://www.regentstreetcinema.com/programme/in-conversation-with-cecilia-stenbom/
Monday 5th February, 7pm, Centre for Contemporary Arts (CCA) Glasgow
http://www.cca-glasgow.com/programme/in-conversation-with-cecilia-stenbom
Monday 12th February, 6pm, Tyneside Cinema Newcastle upon Tyne
https://www.tynesidecinema.co.uk/film-and-events/view/rules-engagement-plus-q
Tuesday 13th February, 7pm, The Maltings Berwick
https://www.maltingsberwick.co.uk/events/eventsandtalks/3645
Wednesday 15th February, 6pm, The Tetley Leeds
https://thetetley.org/cecilia-stenbom-screening-qa/
February 2018
Beam Reach Blasting will be exhibited at Woodhorn Museum in 2018.
http://www.experiencewoodhorn.com/coming-soon…beam-reach-blasting/
MY PART OF YOUR HOME at Shipley Art Gallery
April 5th 2017
Parallel included in Somewhere Becoming Sea
Somewhere Becoming Sea is an exhibition of international artists’ works, curated by FVU for Hull UK City of Culture 2017. It examines the fluctuating boundaries between land and sea, at a time when a warming global climate threatens sea-level rises and equally far-reaching economic forces are already encroaching on traditional patterns of maritime industry and trade. Highlighting Hull’s longstanding place as a gateway to the North Sea (and destinations beyond), the exhibition considers how the city has been at the sharp end of some of these changes, but is also at the forefront of a greater understanding of them. Capturing the elemental power of the sea as it hits the shore (and as it plays on people’s imagination), the works in the show reflect how the expanse of water that divides countries has always also been a channel that connects them.
Featuring recently produced work by artists from across the North Sea region, the exhibition draws out affinities in history, culture, topography and language, and points to a shared interest in harnessing, moderating, or better appreciating the vital presence of the sea in our future ecology and economy. Encompassing works in many media, including moving-image, photography, audio, objects and text, Somewhere Becoming Sea includes contributions from Simon Faithfull, Nikolaj Bendix Skyum Larsen, Ruth Maclennan, Isabella Martin, Cecilia Stenbom, Esther Johnson, Gunnar Jónsson, Guy Moreton, Nina Sverdvik, Christine Clinckx, Alec Finlay and Hanna Tuulikki, and features the 2016 FVU commission The Sea is an Edge and an Ending by Lavinia Greenlaw.
http://www.fvu.co.uk/projects/fvu-touring-somewhere-becoming-sea
24 February 2017
Selected for Connect/Exchange at Chapter Arts, Cardiff.
https://northernmedia.org/latest/artist-filmmakers-confirmed-connectexchange-residencies/
February 2017
Behind the scenes footage from Rules Of Engagement. Photos by Rositsa Petrova
03-06 November
REMAKE selected as part of Experimental programme at Aesthetica Short Film Festival.
21 July
Filming Parallel in Gothenburg (Part of Tall Ships Cultural Festival)
14 July 2016
FILMING in North East England as part of the Tall Ships Cultural Festival.
Commissioned by Active Northumberland to create a lens-based response to the Tall Ships North Sea Regatta.
A moving image project that explores the portrayal of a geographic place, through both factual and fictional narratives, in this instance the coastal landscapes and build seaside environment of Northumberland and Gothenburg. The work is based on a series of cinematic and televisual scenes filmed in the North East of England and Gothenburg region which is then exchanged and re-staged in the other location.
Presentation of recent work at The film zone Communicate, Common Ground, York
21 June 2016
REMAKE (2016) Duration 4:04 minutes
We invite participants who want to reflect on their own practice in relation to the cinematic. Indicative themes include but are not restricted to: the cinematic experience, collective audience and the space of the cinema; the theory and practice in/of cinematic art; the art of the creative non-fiction; academic research and fiction film; the limits and possibilities of expanded cinema. While ‘the Cinematic’ provides a focus for the Communicate zone, participants are free to submit projects / presentations that showcase work and discuss themes about any aspect of film practice. Communicate encourages open and democratic exchanges designed to bring like-minded and disparate folk together in order to showcase work (excerpts of finished work and/or work-in-progress) to stimulate discussion and generate new ways of thinking, feeling and looking.
http://www.ahrccommons.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/provisional-programme-brief.pdf
The Art Of Misdirection
5 May 2016
http://www.balticmill.com/whats-on/symposium-the-art-of-misdirection
Bringing together eminent researchers and practitioners in arts, geography, history, and politics, this interdisciplinary symposium will examine themes proposed by the multilayered work of Omer Fast: narrative, truth and memory; ethics, empathy and trauma; digital media and surveillance.
The work of Omer Fast rests on the use and subversion of narrative to interrogate how stories are constructed, and perceptions/preconceptions are formed. His work often takes as its subject matter that which is difficult and contentious, and evolves through dialogue or confrontation between people. Exploring how memory is recalled, stories are (re)told, and events are represented, his films often exploit and manipulate the relationships between the recorded image and speech to raise questions about the status of narrative. Fast’s work, in its difficult subject matter, the way issues in which are (re)presented, and the questions it raises for BALTIC itself in presenting this work to the public, provides a unique platform against which to examine the questions that are being raised for researchers working on issues of trauma and conflict.
The programme will evolve throughout the day with presentations, active discussion, gallery visits, workshop and debate. Lunch and refreshments provided.
With contributions from:
Prof. Peter Stone OBE, UNESCO Chair in Cultural Property Protection and Peace
Dr. Frank Usbeck, Post Doctoral Research Fellow, Dresden University of Technology
Prof. Stephen Graham, Professor of Cities & Society, Newcastle University
Dr. Ulrike Boskamp, Art Historian and Research Fellow, Freie Universität Berlin
Prof. Max Silverman, Professor of Modern French Studies, Director of Research, School of Languages, Cultures and Societies, University of Leeds
Post Graduate Research students from regional universities to be announced on the day
Convened by:
Prof. Richard Clay Professor of Digital Humanities, Newcastle University
Hannah Marsden, Adult Public Programmes Assistant, BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art
Michael Mulvihill, Artist and PhD Researcher, Newcastle University
Dr. Venda Pollock Director of Newcastle University Institute for Creative Arts Practice
Cecilia Stenbom, Artist and PhD Researcher, Newcastle University
Delivered with the Northern Bridge Doctoral Training Partnership and Newcastle University Institute for Creative Arts Practice.
SYSTEM at Short Film Night at Tyneside Cinema
11 April 2016
https://www.evensi.uk/short-film-night-april-tyneside-cinema/174630492
RISE SHOWCASE at BFI Stephen Street
21 January 2016
https://twitter.com/northernmedia/status/690186825206501376
http://projects.northernmedia.org/rise/filmmakers/cecilia-stenbom
A Guide To The Art Of Cinema, Tyneside Cinema
19 January 2016
A Guide To The Art Of Cinema, our series of essential titles that push film’s boundaries, returns with artist and researcher Cecilia Stenbom introducing her choice of Stanley Kubrick’s masterpiece of modern horror starring Jack Nicholson.
Nicholson puts in a frighteningly deranged performance as Jack Torrance, a frustrated writer who takes a job as an off-season caretaker at an isolated hotel, together with his wife Wendy and his young son Danny. As a snowstorm traps the family and cabin fever sets in, Jack gradually descends into madness…
https://www.tynesidecinema.co.uk/whats-on/art/past-programme/2016/guide-to-the-art-of-cinema
‘In Waiting’ at London Short Film Festival
12 January 2016
http://shortfilms.org.uk/events/2016-01-12-new-shorts-gods-lonely-men-going-solo
In Waiting competing at Reggio Film Festival
20 October 2015
http://www.reggiofilmfestival.com/programma.asp?evento=Reggio%20Film%20Festival%202015
‘In Waiting’ at SHORT FILM NIGHT iSHORTS SPECIAL.
27 April 2015
Candle & Bell are excited to announce that this month we will have a very special edition of our Short Film Night at the Tyneside Cinema. We will be screening 4 films from Creative England’s iShorts 2014 programme. The iShorts initiative is designed to help to help with funding and mentoring entry level filmmakers, from the English regions.
We are very pleased to announce that we will be screening 4 of the films produced last year. Following the films there will be an opportunity to ask the filmmakers questions about their films as well as their experience of taking part in the iShorts initiative.
http://candleandbell.com/blog/short-film-night-ishorts
RISE
1 February 2015
Selected for RISE, An intensive year long development programme for female writer-directors based in the UK
http://projects.northernmedia.org/rise
Sight & Sound. Aesthetica 2014: shorts circuit York by Harriet Warman
Byker Metro station new giant artwork by Cecilia Stenbom is unveiled
http://www.chroniclelive.co.uk/news/north-east-news/new-giant-artwork-public-transport-8277450
North East Contemporary Visual Arts Network (CVAN): The work of Cecilia Stenbom
Cecilia Stenbom discusses four of her films which explore notions of fear, perceptions of crime and obsessive compulsive behaviour within society. Two of her films, System (2014) and In Waiting (2014) are featured in the Aesthetica Short Film Festival in York 6-9th November 2014.
https://vimeo.com/111018933
The Case will be screened at 6th Cairo Video Festival, Egypt, 5.-19.11.2014
http://www.av-arkki.fi/en/news/short-films-6th-cairo-video-festival-egypt-5-19-11-2014/
The Creative England supported iShort In Waiting will receive its industry showcase screening at York’s Aesthetica Film Festival this weekend.
BALTIC 39 | FIGURE TWO
https://vimeo.com/102826373
This Is Tomorrow. Cecilia Stenbom: Everyday Collateral. Exhibition review by Rebecca Travis
http://thisistomorrow.info/articles/cecilia-stenbom-everyday-collateral
This week’s art shows, Guardian Guide
http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2014/jun/20/dennis-hopper-bruce-mclean-exhibitionist
Creative England selects 20 shorts
http://www.screendaily.com/news/creative-england-selects-20-shorts/5071162.article
Culture Awards 2013: Find out who the richly deserving winners are
http://www.thejournal.co.uk/news/north-east-news/culture-awards-2013-find-out-7000341
Cecilia Stenbom, feature by Stephanie Oswald in NARC magazine, March 2014
http://www.scribd.com/doc/209837580/SYSTEM-by-Cecilia-Stenbom-features-in-NARC-magazine#scribd
International Film Festival Rotterdam
https://www.iffr.com/en/films/the-case/
Corridor 8. Interview: Cecilia Stenbom, by Lauren Velvick
http://www.corridor8.co.uk/online/interview-cecilia-stenbom-2/
MAWA, Winnipeg. Artist Talk, Cecilia Stenbom
http://mawa.ca/artist-in-residence-talk-cecilia-stenbom/
Cecilia Stenbom: Nobody gets out of here alive
http://www.kaapelingalleria.fi/en/exhibitions/7-2-3-3-2013-cecilia-stenbom/
Cecilia makes a Case for Berwick
http://www.berwick-advertiser.co.uk/what-s-on/arts-entertainment/cecilia-makes-a-case-for-berwick-1-3098931
Cecilia Stenbom 