A film on life in the Magdalene Laundries, funded and produced by the Department of Religious Studies in conjunction with the media production company CTVC, won a national Learning on Screen award from the British Universities’ Film and Video Council. The awards recognise excellence in the use of visual media as an educational resource and the Magdalenes film was commended by judges for its powerful exploration of the history and legacy of the Laundries for secondary school audiences. The film won first prize in the ‘Courseware and Curriculum Non-Broadcast’ category for online films and programmes produced for specific educational target groups.
Professor Gordon Lynch, an executive producer for the film, welcomed news of the award: ‘The project emerged out of close collaboration between the University of Kent, CTVC’s TrueTube team and researchers at University College Dublin who have done crucial work in reconstructing the history of women’s experiences in the Laundries. The greatest credit goes to Gabrielle, a former Magdalene, whose return to the site of the Laundry in which she was incarcerated formed the heart of the film, and whose testimony about her experiences make the film so moving and compelling. We’re proud to have been involved in this project and we hope that the award will lead more people to watch and use the film so that a new generation of students can understand a difficult part of what is still relatively recent history.’
The awards ceremony was held at the British Film Institute in London last night, 24 April 2014. The Magdalenes film can be viewed at www.truetube.co.uk/film/magdalenes