Postgraduate: Learning on Screen awards; MSc in science media production; folk-song studies

A spooky film about an old woman revisiting her wartime home has come first in the postgraduate category of the Learning on Screen awards.

A spooky film about an old woman revisiting her wartime home has come first in the postgraduate category of the Learning on Screen awards. The competition is run by the British Universities Film and Video Council, which promotes the production, study and use of film in higher and further education. The winning film, Coming Home, by Gemma Carrington of the National Film and Television School (NFTS), used live shooting, animation and special effects, and senior film-makers on the judging panel were amazed by it, says Murray Weston, director of the council. The awards, which took place on 5 April, are about extolling best practice in film production in education, and giving students a chance to get noticed, says Weston. Two postgraduates were highly commended - Mark Thomas of Imperial College, who made a documentary about the rising tides of the Venice lagoon; and Edward Foster, also of the NFTS, who made a cartoon about a little girl called Anna Spud, and managed to get big names such as Jim Broadbent and Terry Wogan to provide voices for the piece. "These students ring top people up, and they are sometimes willing to lend a hand," says Weston. A documentary about an active volcano in Java, by Philip Mulroy at the NFTS, was commended. "It followed people working in a volcanic vent, collecting sulphur, and being paid very little," says Weston.

* The student who investigated Venice in the documentary mentioned above took Imperial College's MSc in science media production. This one-year full-time course is aimed at scientists who want to make a career out of reporting science in broadcast media. It runs alongside Imperial's MSc in science communication. Both programmes were set up to address a lack of scientific understanding among journalists.

* Folk-song studies is a branch of ethnomusicology. This is a fancy term for the study of music and dance from around the world. A new book on folk-song studies, billed as a major contribution to the field, was launched last week, and includes papers written by postgraduate students at universities in the UK, Hungary and Germany. Folk Song: Tradition, Revival and Re-Creation explores revival movements in folk music, the men and women who made them happen, and significant singers and songs, says the folk-music expert Dr Ian Russell, of Aberdeen University, who edited the book with his colleague Dr David Atkinson. Singers' styles and repertoires are analysed, and issues such as the commercialisation of folk music and "fakelore" - the deliberate introduction of myths into music - are covered. The postgraduate work includes a study of a singing style in a type of Korean narrative song, completed by Yeonok Jang at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London, and "Songs from under the flightpath: environmental protest song in context" by Simon Heywood of Sheffield University. The book is £25 including postage and is available at www.abdn.ac.uk/elphinstone.

g.mccann@independent.co.uk