Hope Strickland's FVU-commissioned film a river holds a perfect memory (2024) premieres at the International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR) from 30 January - 9 February 2025!

a river holds a perfect memory (2024) 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.

The film considers the interrelation of water, memory and labour and plays with techniques of refusal, errantry and repetition. Through the divergent and overlapping temporalities of working across archival footage, newly shot 16mm and LIDAR scans, the film uses water to track the impact of the industrial revolution and labour migration upon supposedly disparate communities.

"Bodies of water are intervened upon, moved, disrupted and exploited. Labouring bodies experience similar pressures from the same forces of power and extraction. Distant communities – Northern England and Jamaica – share similar histories of manipulation and oppression whose record is kept in the living memory of its waterways. But water, like people, can find a way to exert its own will." – Cristina Kolozsváry-Kiss

The film features as part of the event 'Drawn & Quartered':

31 Jan 2025, 19:00.

KINO 3

1 Feb 2025, 14:00.

LantarenVenster 6