Miranda Pennell is an artist and filmmaker. She originally studied contemporary dance in New York and in Amsterdam, after which she started to explore ideas about human movement through filmmaking.   While her film work has led away from the specificity of contemporary dance, an interest in performance remains central to her films.    Pennell’s films and videos look at everyday rituals and performance that can be found in the ‘real’ world, with a diverse range of subjects that has included soldiers and a marching band, teenage ice-skaters, amateur and professional dancers, fight-directors and aspiring drummers.   These films revolve around real people and places.   However their realism is often undercut by a formal approach to camera and editing which finds surprising contrasts and contradictions within the worlds explored.    Her films and videos are screened in independent cinema programmes, for gallery exhibition and for broadcast, and have received funding from the Arts Council England, Film London's Artists Film and Video Award, the Channel 4 British Documentary Foundation, and BBC television.   They have won numerous prizes, including from the Biennale of Moving Images (Geneva 2005), the  Ann Arbour Film Festival (USA  2004),  Cork International Film Festival (Ireland 2003), the Grand Prix Video Danse (France 1997).