Research Cafe: We Are Making A Film About Mark Fisher - Screening & Discussion TBC

Sophie Mellor and Simon Poulter, working as Close and Remote, developed the film between 2024-2026. Through instagram (@markfisherfilm), they enlisted the support of 70 collaborators. The film was made with no budget, no studio backing and no institutional permissions.  It has been through two main edit stages, resulting in the most recent ‘Zagreb/Goddard’ cut in 2026. This introduced new footage from Mark Fisher’s  ’Slow Cancellation of the future’ lecture at MaMa in Zagreb in 2014.
 
The film begins with Mark Fisher talking about Capitalist Realism, his most well known concept and book. The opening scenes are set in his home town of Felixstowe in Suffolk, leading into a beach scene where we encounter Professor Parkins played by Justin Hopper. Parkins is a character from the M. R. James ghost story ‘Oh, whistle, and I’ll come to you, my lad ” from 1904. Fisher cited this story on several occasions and was also interested in Jonathan Miller’s classic BBC adaptation of the story from 1968. Shots have been matched from this film in We Are Making A Film About Mark Fisher.

Parkins, the ghost, then traverses through Mark Fisher’s life and encounters the same events that Fisher wrote about. The large scale protest footage was shot by Close and Remote from 2011 up until 2025 in London. This acts as a kinetic reminder of resistance to austerity cuts, Trump and student debts, along with footage from Margaret Thatcher’s funeral and the Brexit ‘party’ outside the Houses of Parliament. Towards, the end of his life, Fisher questioned if these protests had any impact.

The film avoids nostalgia and is not a biography of Mark Fisher – it deliberately assesses his main ideas and concepts.

Event Schedule: 

6:00pm: Introduction by Dr Andrew Fergus Wilson of The University of Derby (Approx 20m)
6:20pm: Film screening (65m)
7:25pm: Post-film discussion (30m)