Liz Banks

Liz Banks serves as a Senior Lecturer in Photography and Moving Image at the University of the West of England within the Faculty of Arts, Creative Industries, and Education (ACE), leveraging her extensive background as a filmmaker trained at Bournemouth Film School and the BBC where she worked as a researcher, editor, and director before producing independent documentaries and dramas for broadcasters like the BBC and ITV.

Her academic qualifications include:

• MA Art Media and Design (Film) with Distinction from the University of the West of England (UWE)
• Advanced Diploma in Media Production (Film) with Merit from Bournemouth and Poole College of Art and Design
• BA Hons in English from Birmingham University

Banks' research explores Film and Moving Image through Photography, Documentary Filmmaking, and Artists Film with deep focus on Mental Health in Film and Landscape and Place studies. Her practice adopts an interdisciplinary lens integrating phenomenology, cultural geography, and oral history to create experiential works that blend still/moving imagery, documentary, drama, and archival elements—recently evolving through a renewed engagement with photographic processes to investigate visual perception and spatial relationships.

While no individual scientific awards are documented, her films received British Council support and international festival screenings, alongside grant funding including the CMIR bursary (2015-16) for the 'Red Moon Diaries' exhibition at Centrespace art gallery.

As an educator and mentor, Banks co-founded Bath Community Television and has guided young filmmakers through the BFI-funded Film Academy Bristol course where student productions won awards at Polish youth film festivals. She actively collaborates with Avon and Wiltshire Mental Health Partnership NHS Trust, Bristol Old Vic Theatre School, and the Alzheimer's Society-funded charity Lighting Up, while delivering workshops for organizations like Somerset Film and Video and Calling the Shots.

Her institutional partnerships extend to speaking engagements with Bristol University medical students on mental health films since 2014, with her work 'Look Up' featured at dementia-focused conferences across Oxford, Cambridge, and Bristol.