The Golden Window

Abstract

The Golden Window: Forging new links between Art & Healthcare through Immersive Filmmaking Techniques to Explore the Intersection between Science & Emotion within a Neonatal Intensive Care Unit. The Golden Window, filmed within 72 hours of opportunity, follows the medically induced cooling of Baby J after traumatic birth. The film provides an honest and powerfully immersive insight into the NICU, Cambridge. Co-created with staff, patients and carers the film asks how they 'feel' within this 'bubble'. The Golden Window explores the human condition and enhances the viewers intellectual and emotional response to complex environments. Partners The Rosie, Cambridge University’s Hospital Trust. This immersive documentary project employed co-creation, participatory techniques and perspective shifting visuals & sonic framework to capture the human condition and enhance the viewers intellectual and emotional response to the life-saving procedures (therapeutic hypothermia) at one of the country’s leading Neonatal Intensive Care Units, The Rosie, Cambridge. The Golden Window investigates how the filmmaker can engage audiences with the complex scientific and emotional tension of NICU through the creation of an original audio-visual framework to communicate the impact of scientific developments & understanding of the human condition in relations to critically ill newborns and their families in NICU (known as the bubble). Outputs included: a film documentary (theatrical & on-line); multi-screen exhibition; and an interactive user driven documentary. The project offered an alternative mode of filmmaking healthcare documentaries (e.g. ‘Rig filming’), has been distributed to and by stakeholders globally, and was short listed for The New York Times Op-Ed (SIDFF 2016), BUVFC (2016) and Winner of the AHRC Research in Film Award (2019)