Dr. Coral Houtman FHEA
Reader in Film
School of Film, Photography of Digital Media
University of South Wales (ATRiuM Building)
86-88 Adam Street
Cardiff
CF24 2FN
CORAL HOUTMAN is a fiction filmmaker presently employed at the University of South Wales as Reader in Film and Video. Born and bred in London, she started off as a film projectionist for the BBC and subsequently worked for fifteen years in various roles in the film industry, writing and directing films, eventually becoming an editor of documentary and fiction. Coral studied film at the University of Kent, the University of Bristol and is a directing graduate of the National Film and Television School where she directed Augustine, a forty minute costume drama which won the award for Best Film 1995 at the Houston International Film Festival (an award previously won by Martin Scorsese). She gained her Ph.D. in 2003 (University of Kent) on the subject of Female Voice and Agency in Film Adaptations which concentrated on aspects of narrative and point of view, examining the practical aspects of film adaptation in relationship to mainstream thrillers and female writing.
Coral’s interactive film drama “Echo” (screened at Riverfront Gallery Newport and ‘Project Raspberry Pi Lockin’, Sony UK Technology Centre, Pencoed), explores the poetics of narrative multi-screen, immersive gallery drama, researching scripting, directing, mise en scene, editing and sound-design for five-screen interactive immersive drama. Practice-based research on this project also covered cross-platform production and screening as well as developing and combining software and hardware to run the installation. (Houtman, Coral. 2011. “Adventures in Remediation: The Making of Echo”. Digital Creativity 22:4, 263-274. DOI: 10.1080/14626268.2011.622285.)
Coral researched on “The Digital Media Essay”, first publishing on the topic and then introducing this as an undergraduate module. Currently she has projects in developing including “Archaeologies”, a transmedia fiction and documentary TV mystery series, and research into cinematic point of view and landscape, through the making of a short film “FEAR”.
Coral is on the Editorial Board of The Journal of Media Practice.
To see Coral’s films please visit her website at coralhoutman.co.uk and echoandnarcissus.co.uk.
Publications
2014
Houtman, C., Thomas, M. and Barrett, J. “The Audiovisual/Digital Media Dissertation. Journal of Applied Research in Higher Education, 6(1), pp.98-118.
2012
Echo. Interactive movie. ScreenWorksVolume III. The online peer reviewed publication of practice belonging to Journal of Media Practice. Intellect, London, June 2012. jmpscreenworks.com
2011
“Adventures in Remediation: The Making of Echo” in Digital Creativity, Vol 22:4, Taylor and Francis: Routledge, UK.
“The Student Author, Lacanian Discourse Theory and La Nuit Américaine”. In Critical Cinema: Beyond the Theory of Practice. Clive Myer (Editor), Bill Nichols (Introduction) (Wallflower: Columbia University Press: December 2011).
“Echo and Narcissus: Fiction Film making Practice as Research” 2011 ASCA International Workshop “Practicing Theory” at the University of Amsterdam. ASCA Conference Publication. Accessed 30/01/2013
2009
“Cultural Androgyny and Gendered Authorship in Don’t Look Now”, PsyArt: An Online Journal for the psychological study of the arts. Editors, N. Holland, M. Schwarz. (March 2009). psyartjournal.com.
2004
“Questions of Unreliable Narration in The Sixth Sense” in Scope: An Online Journal of Film and TV Studies. University of Nottingham. scope.com.
Voice and Agency in Film Practice”. The Journal of Media Practice Intellect Publications. Vol 5, Issue 2.
2003
“Lacan’s Theory of the Four Discourses and The Sixth Sense”. In Journal for Cultural Research. Vol 2. Issue 3.