Power & Identity: Five Women Filmmakers
Curated by Cherie Federico, Director, Aesthetica Magazine
Mercer Art Gallery, Harrogate
1 – 30 September 2024
Tuesday to Sunday from 9:30am until 5pm | Admission Free
Admissions are free.
September sees Harrogate’s Mercer Art Gallery host an exhibition of artists’ films in an exciting new venture for the town’s public art gallery.
In partnership with York-based international contemporary arts organisation Aesthetica, the gallery will show a specially curated programme of works by five contemporary women filmmakers.
Time-based media is an important strand of modern and contemporary art practice, with many artists creating work that depends on technology, be it video, film, audio or digital; part of the experience is to watch the art unfold over time. However, it’s only recently that the Mercer has developed the facilities to show this kind of work.
The five films explore themes such as colonial legacies, nation building, diaspora, the ethics of representation, and the impact of war. They reflect the human experience, with moments of joy and euphoria, as well as pain and loss.
The five artists are: Jasmina Cibic, Juliana Kasumu, Manjinder Virk, Michelle Williams Gamaker and Rhea Storr
The five films will be played on 75minute loop and the audience members can sit for its entirety, of for as many of the short films as desired.
Content Guidance; Adult themes discussed, viewer discretion is advised.
Rhea Storr, an artist of British and Bahamian heritage, examines her identity as a multiracial person in her short film A Protest, A Celebration, A Mixed Message. Storrs intersperses contemporary and historical footage of the West Indian Carnival in Leeds.
Celebration is protest at Leeds West Indian Carnival. A look at forms of authority the short film asks who is really performing. Following Mama Dread’s, a troupe whose carnival theme is Caribbean immigration to the UK, we are asked to consider the visibility of black bodies, particularly in rural spaces.
Rhea Storr is an artist filmmaker from Leeds of British Bahamian heritage, who explores the representation of Black and mixed-race cultures. Masquerade as a site of protest or subversion is an ongoing theme in her work.
Rhea Storr often works in 16mm film; she considers that analogue film might be useful to Black artists, both in the aesthetics it creates and the production models it facilitates.
She is resident at Somerset House, London and occasionally programs at Alchemy Film and Moving Image Festival. She is the winner of the Aesthetica Art Prize 2020 and the inaugural Louis Le Prince Experimental Film Prize. She was educated at Oxford University and the Royal College of Art
Length 12 mins
Known for her inventive filmmaking and screenwriting, Michelle Williams Gamaker draws on the classic movies from early Hollywood and British cinema that she watched growing up. Thieves is a fantasy adventure retelling of The Thief of Bagdad, a silent, black and white film from 1924, which was remade in colour in 1940.
Thieves evokes early cinema and Technicolor classics, blending practical and analogue methods of special effects with contemporary technology to combine past and present filmmaking.
Michelle Williams Gamaker is a Sri-Lankan British award-winning moving image artist. Since 2014, she has been developing Fictional Activism: the restoration of marginalised film stars of colour as central figures, who return in her works as brown protagonists to challenge the fictional injustices to which they have been historically consigned.
By proposing critical alternatives to imperialist storytelling in British and Hollywood studio films, she interrogates cinema by sabotaging the casting process and utilising cinema’s tools against itself.
Length 27 mins
Jasmina Cibic’s film Tear Down and Rebuild (2015) was shot inside the preserved modernist architecture of the former Palace of the Federation in Belgrade, Serbia (formerly part of Yugoslavia). It presents a debate around arguments to rebuild, renovate, or destroy buildings, monuments, and cultural icons that no longer serve contemporary political contexts.
Cibic’s film features an all-female cast; a Nation Builder, a Pragmatist, a Conservationist and an Artist/Architect. The film’s dialogue is composed from quotes drawn from various political speeches. The sources for the script include amongst others: Regan’s speech on the Berlin Wall, Prince Charles’s 1984 address at RIBA and ISIS bloggers’ proclamation on the demolishment of temples as well as examples from Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, and Benito Mussolin.
Jasmina Cibic is a Slovenian performance, installation and film artist who lives and works in London. Her work often explores the construction of national cultures, their underlying ideologies, political goals and uses, as well as the soft power of the arts, particularly architecture. She was born in Ljubljana.
Length 15 mins 28 sec
Manjinder Virk’s award-winning Out of Darkness explores the experience of death through the eyes of one Aid Worker. The narrative is made up of nine different voices, each of whom represents a lost soul who haunts the conscience of the worker. Collectively, the figures tell a story of what it means to be in the presence of someone’s last moments, from the peaceful passing of family members to the traumatic injuries of war – and the legacy it leaves on the living.
Actors include, Riz Ahmed a British Pakistani actor, rapper, and activist who’s made history as the first Asian star to win an acting prize at the Primetime Emmy Awards. Jimmy Akinbola, recently seen in the coveted role of ‘Geoffrey’, trusted advisor to Phil and the Banks family in Bel-Air and Tom Hiddleston known for his breakthrough role as Loki in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
Out of Darkness won Best of Festival and Best Drama awards at the Aesthetica Short Film Festival. Other shorts from Virk include the documentary 23 Days (2020), made during lockdown, and Things We Never Said (2022) – she is developing the latter into her first feature-length film.
She will soon be making her television directorial debut for Emmerdale (ITV) and in 2024, she launched her own production outfit with writer/director Neil Biswas called Riverbird Films, which will make content for both international and UK broadcast and streaming services.
Length 12 mins 45 sec
“What Does the Water Taste Like?” is a short film directed by Juliana Kasumu, which explores the production of identity through the lens of the filmmaker’s personal experiences as a British-Nigerian. It combines intimate conversations with archival footage and contemporary visuals to create a dialogue between the past and present.
Juliana Oluwatosin Kasumu is a Nigerian-British artist and filmmaker based in London, Lagos, and New Orleans.
“My practice is characterised by fragmented, non-linear narratives regarding dentity formation, with my personal sentiments regarding transculturalism being at the forefront of the projects I have undertaken. My most recent project “What Does The Water Taste Like?” for example, is presented as a walk-through photo, video and sculptural installation. It is an exploration of spaces such as the Black hair salon and the Black church; sites where people gather and provide one-another a sense of security and familiarity. Using memory-work as a catalyst, my recent work reflects my musings n neocolonialism, language, belonging and the ways in which Africa, Europe and The Americas continue to reinvent one-another.”
Length 7 min 59 sec
