Fashion in Film Festival Showing at Plymouth Arts Cinema
This October, Plymouth takes its place on the national stage as Plymouth Arts Cinema hosts The Fashion in Film Festival: Grounded — a UK-wide season exploring the complex relationship between fashion and nature through the camera lens. For Plymouth, this is more than just another screening: it’s a significant cultural moment connecting the city’s vibrant creative scene to an international conversation about sustainability and design.
Written by community reporter Victoria Lammie — herself a practising fashion designer — the article explores why the festival’s arrival in Plymouth matters, featuring insights from Charlotte McGuinness at Plymouth Arts Cinema and an interview with local bio-designer Joanne Nudd. Joanne’s innovative work with natural materials and bio-regional textiles perfectly mirrors the festival’s themes, showing how Plymouth is helping to lead the way in reimagining fashion’s future.
The Fashion in Film Festival: Grounded screens 24–25 October at Plymouth Arts Cinema.
This October sees ‘The Fashion in Film Festival’s Grounded’ arriving at Plymouth Arts Cinema. The festival is a major UK-wide season exploring the relationship between fashion and nature through the camera lens.
Fashion in Film Festival is based at Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London. The season offers an expanded understanding of fashion's entanglements with nature in an era marked by escalating ecological crises. The programme is co-curated with Marketa Uhlirova who is a lecturer at Central Saint Martins where she is a senior research fellow in Fashion and History Theory. Marketa is also a director of the Fashion in Film Festival. Dal Chodha also a co-curator, writer and pathway leader on the BA Communication and Promotion course at Central Saint Martins. There are also a number of guest curators. The film festival is all made possible by awards from the National Lottery.
I spoke to Charlotte Mcguinness, Marketing Manager for Plymouth Arts Cinema about why they brought ‘Fashion in Film Festival’ to Plymouth.
“It’s a UK wide season of films exploring the link between fashion and nature and we’re really well placed at the Arts University Plymouth because there’s Fashion Design Courses, Textiles and Costume there and that ties in really well with what’s happening in our venue. The festival is based at Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London. So it’s got a good art college pedigree anyway. But also we do show a lot of environmental films related to climate change in our cinema and a lot of these films in the festival tie in with that. We’ve built quite a large audience for environmentally aware film.”
We then go on to speak about my own practice in sustainable fashion and how at Sustainable Fashion Week South West I recently connected with a ‘Bio’ designer who is currently studying at Arts University Plymouth. Later in the article I will be introducing the Bio designer and speaking to her about her practice and connections to the film festival.
Dust to Dust
Charlotte goes on to tell me about the films. Dust to Dust (Friday 24th October, 6pm) asks how can haute couture help to solve the ecological harm caused by ready-to-wear’s ferocious pace? The documentary trails the development of a new non-woven material made using two 50-Kilogram bundles of discarded clothing procured from Kenya. Nakazato’s ethereal garments presented a year later in Paris offer a reimagining of the fashion world at it’s creative conscious best.
Nature’s Resources
Nature’s Resources (Saturday 25th October, 11am), is a special collection of short films for children. From the delicate silhouettes in Lotte Reinigers’s Thumbelina and the resourceful tiny mammal in How the Mole Got His Trousers to the vibrant sensuous biodiversity celebrated in Idodo and The Butterfly, these films reminded us that adornment is not the sole preserve of humankind. It is a relaxed family screening (suitable for ages 2-10).
Donkey Skin
Donkey Skin (Saturday 25th October, 5.30pm) is a surrealist musical that interrogates taboos, agency and cultural myth making. A young princess is dressed in magnificently gaudy costumes, yet in a bid to escape her father’s marriage proposal, she dons a donkey skin before running away from her kingdom. The film offers a fantastical slant on the transformative effects of what we wear and the complexities of fur.
Joanne Nudd is a Plymouth based textile Bio-Designer, specialising in bio-regional design, focusing on the creation of innovative, sustainable fabrics that bridge traditional craftsmanship with cutting edge material science. She describes her work as ‘deeply rooted in the understanding of material compositions, historical textile practices, and the inherent possibilities of local, endemic resources. Drawing inspiration from the cottage industries of the past where communities lived in harmony with the land and created textiles from natural materials. I aim to bring a modern, environmentally conscious twist to these traditional techniques.
Compostable lampshade. The Frame is 3d printed bio polymer made from corn husk and the covering is ‘Finksilk’ bio material made using natural died fish scales and a bio material from fish.
Photographer: Tom Antoney.
I caught up with Joanne with regards to the Fashion in Film Festival and we chatted about ‘Dust to Dust’. She told me how Yuima Nakazato the Tokyo based designer featured in the film is someone who she has been inspired by whilst doing her research and who she has followed for the past few years. Joanne goes on to tell me about ‘Spiber’ the Japanese company who produced the material for ‘Yuima Nakazato’ for the Haute Couture collection for Paris Fashion Week 2025; “Spiber works with brewed proteins and that’s what I do. I work with proteins in fish or other things to create bio materials. I didn’t realize he had done a film! So I’m so excited to go and see it.”
When I ask her if she has ever used film within her work she tells me; “I get so involved in my research I tend to forget about my art practice. I'm materials led but I have a list of film makers I would like to have a look at.”
My final question to Joanne is ‘What’s next?’ She tells me about how she’s looking back to 1935 to a milk yarn that was developed in Italy using waste milk and how she would “like to develop this further using modern technology to bring it into the fashion stream.”
The similarities in Joanne's work and research to the narratives within the Fashion In Film Festival are remarkable. It’s incredible to see so much innovation in the circular textiles space right here in Plymouth and I for one just can’t wait to watch Joanne's progress and innovation with her brand ‘Finsilk’.
It's an exciting path and I’m absolutely certain she will create an impact.
