Hope Strickland's FVU-commissioned film a river holds a perfect memory (2024) will screen as part of AEMI's programme AT THE HEART OF THE REAL on Monday 7th April 2-25 at 18:30.

At the centre of the four films in this aemi-curated programme is an interest in how bodies connect to and through their environment, how nature seeps into us and in turn is made and corrupted by us. Made collaboratively in four disparate contexts - Dublin, Wicklow, Jamaica and Winnipeg - each film circles around ideas of community; ideas of home, ritual, friendship, myth and memory. Shot on analogue and digital formats, these DIY, independent films offer ways of remaking the world amongst and against pervasive systems of control.

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.