Julia Parks is an artist filmmaker exploring the different relationships between landscapes, plants, people and industry. She works with experimental documentary forms often using 16mm film, archival footage, poetry and song.
As a recipient of the Film London Artist Moving Image FLAMIN Fellowship in 2020/21, Julia made Seaweed, a short film that explores the relationship between people and seaweed in Northern Scotland. Funded by Arts Council England, the film was screened at BFI London Film Festival, Aesthetica, B3 Biennial & won the Glaister Award for social impact from Brazier International Film Festival.
In 2022 Julia took part in a 6-month residency with Alchemy Film & Arts in Hawick as part of their The Teviot, the Flag and the Rich, Rich Soil programme. Encompassing historical and site-sensitive research, sound recordings, analogue filmmaking and community engagement, the project investigated the relationship between plants, people, animals and textiles making along the Teviot and Tweed Rivers, with specific interest in wool aliens and the stories of migration they tell. The four new films she has made will world premiere at the Alchemy Film and Moving Image Festival in April 2023. Julia is currently living in Hawick, Scotland and is from West Cumbria.
Instagram: juliaemilyparks
Link tree: https://linktr.ee/juliaparksseaweed
Film still from The Wool Aliens (2023) – showing Pirri Pirri Burr, a plant commonly found in New Zealand & Australia and now found growing on the river tweed, the Scottish Borders. The plant arrived in the early 20th century first in imported sheep’s fleeces where it was then washed into the river during the scouring process.
