Mary Martins

Mary Martins is a British Nigerian documentary animator and experimental filmmaker from London. She produces multi-layered, abstract documentaries that focus on socially engaged themes, representing the experiences of marginalised groups. She also uses animation to celebrate her own African heritage, which is currently an area underrepresented within industry.

Her practice-based PhD research is exploring the history and journey of the African slaves from Salvador, Brazil to Lagos, Nigeria using animation as both an autoethnographic and ethnographic method of investigation. She is particularly interested in using animation to interrogate the aspects of colonial history that have resulted in the exclusion of certain stories, and how animation can produce a living archive connecting the past with the present.

Mary graduated from the Royal College of Art in 2022 on the MA Documentary Animation pathway. Her most recent animated documentary, which explores the youth knife crime epidemic in London won the CIRCA and Dazed Class of 2022 award. She lectures at the University of Greenwich teaching animation and graphic digital design.

 

PhD Researchers