Reimagining the Archive: Film Screening plus Q&A with Hope Strickland

This screening event will explore the long-term collaboration between the North West Film Archive and artist-filmmaker Hope Strickland. A presentation of selected archival films will screen alongside Hope's recent moving image work. The screening and discussion will consider the working relationship between archive and artist and what it means to reimagine archival materials.

The event will feature two of Hope's recent films:

• An Unimaginable Leap (2025)

St, Mary’s Parish, Jamaica, April 1760, in a cave near what is now known as Tacky Falls. Tacky’s Rebellion is unfolding as the most significant revolt of the eighteenth-century Caribbean, three decades before the Haitian Revolution.

An unimaginable leap considers the relationship between grief, revolutionary time and cinematic form. Filming traverses loosely associated events and places in the contemporary: b-roll 16mm footage of daily life in Jamaica with the artist’s family; silhouettes of caves in the Peak District and Derbyshire; a celebration of Jamaica Independence Day at a cricket club in Manchester.

Funding from Arts Council England and The Elephant Trust

• a river holds a perfect memory (2024)

a river holds a perfect memory meanders gently across waterways in Jamaica, through leisure activities such as rafting on the Martha Brae River and a night-time boat trip in Falmouth’s bioluminescent Lagoon. In the UK, archival footage tracks industrial impact upon the landscape in Northern England - as water becomes a resource and a reservoir is constructed in Rochdale.

A Film and Video Umbrella and Touchstones Gallery, Rochdale commission with public funding from Arts Council England

All films will be captioned.

Still images:

"An Unimaginable Leap" (2025, Producer Hope Strickland)

"a river holds a perfect memory" (2024, Producer Hope Strickland)

"Lancashire Home of Industry" (1935, Producer Travel Association of Great Britain, North West Film Archive Reference Number 29)

Know what’s Happening Next — before everyone else does.

Get App

Host or Publisher North West Film Archive, Manchester Metropolitan University