Manchester Open Exhibition 2022: Film Programme introduction

About

This screening will be preceded by introductions from the featured artists.

Discover a selection of short films from HOME’s Manchester Open Exhibition 2022, spanning artist film, documentary, animation and more.

Programme includes:

After the Rain: Piccadilly Beach, Costa del Mancunia (2020, 1 min)
“In lockdown, I quickly realised that as much as I love Manchester, I really missed the sea. I spent a lot of time looking through travel books and old holiday photos. While walking through Piccadilly Gardens one day I’m sure I heard seagulls, maybe I imagined it, but it got me thinking…”

Chris Alton: What Mortals Henceforth Shall Our Power Adore (2020, 18 mins)
This video essay draws connections between classical mythology, British colonialism, nuclear weapons and contemporary tax avoidance, via the symbol of the trident. The work frames the trident as “…a cypher for colonial intent, drawn upon by those who would subjugate others.”

Gymnast (Cathy Wilcock and Chris Lyon): Ghost (2020, 5 mins)
A response to Marrakech-based Mint Collective’s exhibition on the theme of ‘guest/host’. Ghost interrogates borders, movement, and insider/outsider tensions. The lockdown-made visuals stitch over 10,000 screengrabs of Google Street View to subvert borders: physical, political, and technological.

Arnold Pollock: Kam (2021, 7 mins)
Kam is an avatar from a digital world who transcends into our world. Exposed, alone and alien, Kam wanders Manchester in search of a path home.

Jessica Wheeler: Jaybirds (2019, 2 mins)
Jaybirds is moved by feelings of attraction, frustration and nostalgia. We are watching the scene through the eyes of the protagonist, experiencing her internalised thoughts. We only mark her presence in the final moment, at which point the internal and reality become difficult to distinguish.

Matthew Bell: The Weather Forecast (2021, 2 mins)
Matthew is currently focusing on creating a weather channel, this is one weather forecast.

Cait Gilfellon: A Body of Work (2021, 6 mins)
“For my dissertation project for my Media and Performance degree at Salford I wanted to focus on the dance industry’s heightened vision of the ‘Thin Ideal’, and the effect that the expectation of that image has on female dancers, taking example from my own and other’s experiences in the industry.”

Nicola Smith: CHAIR DANCING Fitness TAKE 2 (2020, 13 mins)
Inspired by Jodi Stolove’s YouTube video ‘Life’s A Celebration’ Nicola Smith and collaborators break down the uniformity of the well-rehearsed participants, precisely following verbal instructions to examine the ways that disabilities impact on a person’s mobility, or how they interpret information.

Kieran Healy: HAPPINESS WORKS (2020, 7 mins)
A satirical short film made in response to the TED Talk culture and the corporate wellness industry. Happiness Works follows a stereotypical motivational speaker format; opening with our orator, a pompous and pretentious talk-bot who is devoid of humour. He is about to deliver a once in a lifetime speech to an audience who seek his guidance. They feel lost, confused, and are desperately in search of meaning. With the aid of an animatronic arm designed to “mash things”, our orator demonstrates how happiness and meaning can be achieved through increased productivity, and a fresh work-based outlook on life.

Christopher J Wood: Brian Plays the Trumpet (2021, 13 mins)
Brian does indeed play the trumpet, but he also does a lot more. He interacts with people, he is a talking point for people, he adds to the area and he approaches life in his own way. The film is about how without characters like Brian the world would be a much duller place.

Kamran Ali & Martha Jean Lineham: Barber Shops of Levenshulme (2021, 11 mins)
The barber shop is an ongoing popular destination and is currently one of the fastest growing shop-types in the UK. This short film inquires into the plentiful barber shops in the area of Levenshulme in Manchester. Each of the barber shops is a unique and intriguing place with its own identity, that together form an under-explored culture and insight into contemporary masculinity.

Cookie Love: Fever Coat (2021, 6 mins)
“A spoken word piece about my realisations as a black person living in Britain, the relationship I share with my mother and my lived experience. The poem is tied together with the metaphor of a Fever Coat, when kittens are born with white fur which eventually fades to black as they age.”

BANKSIE: Isolated Canvas (2020, 4 mins)
With narration in the form of a reassuring phone call from staunch drag sister and fierce trans-provocateur, Grace Oni Smith, Isolated Canvas captures a moment of transition – from one chapter to another, student to practitioner – channelling support in this moment of temporary isolation through a summoning of radical queerness: a spell of self-protection. Having to abandon more elaborate plans for realisation of the work due to the Covid-19 pandemic, Banksie instead creates a disarmingly bare-boned, handwritten love-letter from a queer universe; granting passage for both themselves but all those who wish to claim their own authenticity.

abbey lam: I am ocean (2021, 3 mins)
A visual poem: using the ocean to represent physical beauty and the idea that beauty is not just physical but in community and in what makes us who we are.

Jon Biddulph: Microbe Muybridge (2020, 3 mins)
We, Homo Sapiens are ever in denial about our animal identity and the intrinsic interconnection of everything in the biome of the Earth. Animated Muybridge photographs of a running man combined with the growth of microbes sampled from the artist’s own microbiota emphasize this intimate connection.