Exploring Risk Film Festival 2024

The Exploring Risk Film Festival is a celebration of science, story-telling, and the belief in a just, safe and sustainable future.

This year the festival is hosted by the Institute of Hazard, Risk and Resilience and Centre for Visual Arts and Culture as part of Durham University‘s Global week, on the theme of:

Shifting the Gaze in Narratives of Disaster Risk Globally

For the past four decades, the way we talk about disasters has been framed in terms of ‘resilience’ and ‘sustainability,’ often labelling affected communities as ‘vulnerable.’ This framing minimises the voices of those who are most impacted and deflects responsibility from those in charge, placing the problem and its potential solution on the individual. In our upcoming film festival, we will explore how stories shape our understanding of disasters and who gets to tell them. A panel of film directors and academics will debate the ethics of these narratives and explore how the gaze in disaster narratives globally could be shifted to make disaster risk reduction strategies more inclusive and impactful.