The Archivist

The Archivist is a 2026 documentary feature film directed by Tim Plester and Rob Curry and produced by Professor Neil Fox on behalf of Falmouth University’s Sound/Image Cinema Lab (after, The Lab) alongside Rebecca Mark-Lawson at Tyke Films and others. The film was released in UK Cinemas in Spring 2027 by ANTI-Worlds distribution and received its World Premiere at Sheffield’s prestigious DocFest film festival in June 2026.

The film is the first feature documentary produced by The Lab - a multi-faceted teaching and research project rooted in film production but also with engagements in archive and curation activity - from development stages through production and post-production. Neil Fox came on board as a producer in 2022, with the film in early stages of crowdfunding and production, as The Lab was supporting another feature documentary, Christopher Morris’s A Year in a Field (2023), coming on board in its final stage of post-production.

Coming on board the production early was a way to investigate how The Lab - and by extension the university - could engage in the production of a documentary feature in meaningful ways, evolving what the Lab had achieved in the independent narrative feature film sector and with documentary post-production. With the nature of documentary filmmaking being very different to narrative, in terms of time, funding, development, production and release [REF] this production project allowed the Lab to research the impact of engagement in long-form documentary on students and staff through pedagogic and research activity.

This impact was assessed via a series of masterclasses, screenings where students were invited to respond to work-in-progress cuts of the film, research seminars with staff doing the same, and sessions where students worked on graphics, for the film, and sound mixes of the final film under guidance from the sound designer, Falmouth lecturer Richard Butler.

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