Dr Roy Hanney

Biography

Roy has over 16 years’ experience of teaching in higher education with specialisms in communications, media production, producing and project development. Prior to commencing a career in education, Roy worked in the UK film and television industry for 15 years as a production technician for a range of broadcast, commercial and corporate clients. His industry experience includes sound recording, camera operating, lighting, vision supervision, postproduction and production management. He also ran a small production company producing educational and corporate videos during the late 80s while studying for a degree as a mature student. Having gained a BA (Hons) Anthropology and Communications at Goldsmiths College, in 1999 Roy made a sideways leap into education taking a position at the London College of Communication first, followed by a position at Chichester University. Fascinated by Chinese culture and traditions Roy took some time out to live aboard and during this time he taught drama/ESL at Hebei United University for two years, before transferring to Zhejiang University of Media and Communications to teach Communications Theory and Lifestyle Journalism. He originally travelled to China in order to pursue interests in learning Taiji/Qigong and has even learnt a few words of Chinese.

Roy’s interests include documentary filmmaking, archive and heritage, oral history and community arts. Commissioned by a local film festival he produced a documentary, Tommy Stories (2010), exploring oral histories that recounted the making of the Ken Russell film Tommy (1975). In collaboration with artist Jez Stevens Roy delivered a Heritage Lottery Funded project, No Diving (2007), a partnership with Wessex Film and Sound Archive that sought to explore cultural memories of the 1930s Hilsea Lido in Portsmouth. Working on commission for Screen South, he documented the annual ‘burn’ by a traditional charcoal maker in Soul of Fire (2006) for Audio Visual Group for Museum and Archives. Roy has also produced and directed short dramas including Golf Club (2016), Abaddon File (2009), and The World Turned Upside Down (1991). Roy is also a founder and director of the DVMISSION 48 Hour Film Challenge, an annual film-making event which is now in its 18th year that sets a challenge to local filmmakers to see if they can make a two-minute film in 48 hours.

Roy’s other area of interest is in the field of experimental media, theatre and performance. He started making experimental films during the early 1980s while working with industrial noise artists Test Department. Then in the late 1980s he developed a technique for the production of multi-layering sampled imagery which was regularly exhibited at Europe's largest video installation at the Fridge Night Club in Brixton, London. In the 1990s he was co-director of live arts platforms The Plunge Club; initiating large scale art installations in unusual locations such as Nunehead Cemetery, South London. He founded arts collective Kino-Kult in 2003 and set about curating open platform AV 'shares', engaging in architectural projection bombing and delivering live performances at The Sixty Second Film Festival. He was commissioned to produce Wedding Story (2015) by Hampshire Cultural Trust, a 20-minute audio-visual narrative projected onto the Willis Museum in Basingstoke as part of the city’s Day of the Dead carnival. Roy is currently a provocateur with AV arts promoter 1000 Plateaus, staging digital potlatches in locations on the south coast. Recent events include Dark or Darker Shivering or Not (November 2016), This is not boring (July 2016), Delirium Dreams & Nightmares (2020) and Imaginarium of Dreams (2021) – all of which were open platforms for audio visual performance, live electronica, spoken word, site-specific installations, live artists and theatre makers.

In 2019 Roy was awarded Arts Council Funding for the transmedia sandbox project Cursed City Dark Tide. Working with a group of creatives from the city of Portsmouth he adapted a novel by a local author, The Snow Witch, and turned the city of Portsmouth into an escape room. In 2022 he was again awarded funding by the Arts Council to produce Octopuses and Other Sea Creatures, an immersive experience staged at Portsmouth Cathedral as part of the We Shine – Portsmouth festival of light. Roy has also worked as a professional VJ at locations as diverse as Trondheim in Norway, Tangshan in Hebei and Burning Man in Navada, USA.