Dr Elan Gamaker
Faculties, deparments and locations
- Kingston School of Art
- Department of Film and Photography
- School of Arts
Course Leader, BA Filmmaking
- Email:
- e.gamaker@kingston.ac.uk
About
I am a senior lecturer in Film, and Course Leader of the BA (Hons) Filmmaking degree at Kingston, with screenwriting my speciality.
I have been a working professional screenwriter and director since 2001, having completed two produced feature-length screenplays and features, episodes for various television drama series, several shorts, and a number of commissioned scripts. I am currently co-writer on three features in development.
Qualifications
- PhD, Film, University of Amsterdam
- MA (Cum Laude), Film and Photographic Studies, Leiden University
- BA (Hons), Film and Drama, University of the Witwatersrand
- Fellow, Higher Education Academy
Domains
Courses taught
I have worked as a story consultant for national and regional bodies, and as a writer have worked under, and alongside, internationally-renowned script writers and tutors such as Hettie Macdonald (Royal Court Theatre, UK), Mark Travis, Judith Weston, David Howard and Martin Daniel (Hollywood), Ken Dancyger (Canada), Arne Bro (Denmark), Gyula Gazdag (UCLA), Franz Rodenkirchen (Torino FilmLab), Jacques Akchoti (La Femis), as well as UK script consultants and tutors Christian Routh, Ian Sellar, Samm Haillay, Angeli Macfarlane and Ellis Freeman.
My scripts have been selected for several international script programmes and markets, including Miramax Scrawl Screenwriters' Lab, IFP (New York), Berlinale Co-Production Market (Berlin), IFFR Cinemart (Rotterdam), Produire au Sud (Nantes) and the Attagirl Incubator Lab.
I am a two-time alumnus (screenwriting and directing) of Amsterdam's Binger Filmlab. I also completed a PhD in Film Studies following a fellowship with the University of Amsterdam's School of Cultural Analysis, with the focus of my research on genre, rhetorical style and audience activation.
I have also consulted for Stop Play Record, a writing scheme for young filmmakers organised by Space Studios London. I was associate editor of peer-reviewed screen media practice research journal Screenworks, and am founding director of Dissolve Into, a feeder scheme for young writing talent.
Publications
Opening the paratext : the Hitchcock trailer as assertion of authorship
Gamaker, Elan, 2018, Open Screens (1), 1
Whose strife is it anyway? The erosion of agency in the cinematic production of kitchen sink realism
Gamaker, Elan (2017). In: LaRocca, David, (ed.), The philosophy of documentary film : image, sound, fiction, truth. Lanham. U.S.: Lexington Books, pp 325-342
The trouble with Alfred : 'Marnie', the McGuffin and myth-making
Gamaker, Elan (2016). In: Moore, Nan, (ed.), Trailing off. London, U.K.: Institute of Contemporary Arts, pp 11-26
The genre mask : rhetorical style and audience activation in the investigation film
Gamaker, E.D.A. (2015), PhD thesis, University of Amsterdam - Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis