Ms Christina Isaac-Viegas

Research project: Forensic Archive and Film: Cinema's Role at the Intersection of Memory and Forgetting in the World of Crime from 1970-2020.

Abstract

My project is creative practice-led research.

I am using the Metropolitan Police Service's Forensic Archive to explore the forensic eye through the work of the female forensic officer - the under-explored female forensic gaze lost among the shrouded archived material. I will do this through the creative act of filming, thereby using the cinematic eye of the camera by myself, a lady filmmaker.

A practice-led interdisciplinary approach between film and criminology allows my theoretical ideas to be actualised – through the act of filming records of crime scenes I am trying to illuminate the neglected female forensic gaze – this will impact the evolution of documenting and preserving of evidence through newer ways of looking and documenting crime. Using digitality to extend the forensic gaze, my work will also challenge already established notions of film theory such as the male gaze, the female gaze and the flaneur's gaze.

Time period – 50-year time period – from 1970 to 2020.

I will present my research findings through the following:

an interactive futuristic sci-fi film to underline how film reconciles the ‘database' of evidence and the ‘narrative' of crime thereby foregrounding the narratological form of storytelling – crime tales retold through the female forensic officer,

a digital archive to enable digital flânerie for the aficionado of crime fiction as they virtually (transcending gender) occupy the mind of the detective solving crimes,

a documentary on the evolvement of the Metropolitan lady forensic officer,

a critical reflection on my creative research – 40000 words.