Dr David Alamouti

Biography

David Alamouti’s practice explores the use of co-creation and improvisational methods of filmmaking as a way of engaging communities and individuals with storytelling processes that move beyond the dynamics of representation. Working with real communities to reimagine stories inspired by the realities of their lives- and using methods around play and improvisation- David’s practice enables participants the safety (and distance) to better communicate their “stories”. This form of practice fundamentally rearticulates the often bureaucratic and hierarchical nature of traditional filmmaking into a social practice rooted in an ethics of interdependence, and an experimental process which foregrounds collaboration.

Between 2008-16, David co-founded the production company Contra Image, where he produced three feature documentaries and directed a further two, securing funds and grants from award-winning strands like Al Jazeera’s Witness, BBC, and the Wellcome Trust. These films were broadcast internationally as well as playing in competition at festivals like Krakow, London International Doc Fest, Jakarta, Big Sky, AM Docs, and Utah. The 2008 documentary Gilad and all that Jazz won the best documentary at the Utah Film Festival and opened the 2009 London international Doc Festival. In 2013 the documentary Boys with Broken Ears won awards for best film at FFD, Noor, Lake Champion International and played at Jakarta, AM Docs, Big Sky and Fajr. From 2016, David has focused on writing and directing fiction and more experimental work. In 2018 The Night the Wind Blew was nominated for three international awards at Palm Springs, and won best film at CYIFF in 2019. In 2021, David made La Rabbia- an experimental feature docu-fiction made through co-creation and improvisational filmmaking methods with locals and asylum seekers in a struggling and divided Italian village. The film premiered at La Salina Doc Festival in Sicily. He has just completed a co-created hybrid feature called Pulling Teeth, which explores life on the margins of one of Europe's largest "urban development" projects in London's Walworth Road.


David’s teaching- as a senior lecturer in the Screen School- includes leading the BA Film Practice degree, and teaching predominantly fiction and documentary production specialising in directing, writing and producing. He has an interest in experimental documentary practice and in 2020 published an article in Transnational Cinemas exploring how transnational technologies calls for a new approach to documentary ethics.


More information is available at www.davidalamouti.com