‘The ruined land: the land in ruins’, a programme of films curated by film curator Alice Butler in parallel to the Brian Maguire exhibition ‘La Grande Illusion’.
Join us for a screening of History of the Present (46 mins), 2023; by Maria Fusco and Margaret Salmon.
With an introduction and post-screening Q+A with Film Curator Alice Butler and Maria Fusco and Margaret Salmon, who be joining live online.
An experimental feminist opera-film about class and conflict, ‘History of the Present’ has been made collaboratively by Maria Fusco and Margaret Salmon, featuring new compositions by Annea Lockwood, libretto by Maria Fusco and improvisational vocal work by Héloïse Werner.
This intersectional, intergenerational feminist work forefronts working-class women’s voices to ask: who has the right to speak, and in what way? Layering sociological, cultural, and political themes from the recent history of Northern Ireland, the work exercises voice, breath and field-recording composition through a range of film techniques and operatic articulations, to amplify marginalised stories. Made on 35mm and video in the streets of Belfast, the Ulster Museum and the Royal Opera House in London, History of the Present observes how defensive architecture defines movement to enforce intersectional histories and identities within daily experiences in conflict and post-conflict zones on an international level.
This screening is in association with La Grande Illusion, the solo exhibition of work by artist Brian Maguire (3 October 2024 – 23 March 2025)
Free, book on Eventbrite or come on the day subject to availability.
Maria Fusco is a working-class interdisciplinary writer, based in Scotland. She works through the registers of critical and performance writing, and is concerned with socio-cultural and political mobilities and atmospherics. The author of seven books and four large-scale performance works, she devised and edited The Happy Hypocrite (published by Book Works) a founding journal of experimental writing. She is currently Professor of Interdisciplinary Writing at University of Dundee, previously holding posts at University of Edinburgh and Goldsmiths, University of London. Maria wrote the libretto for History of the Present and co-directed the opera-film with Margaret Salmon.
Margaret Salmon lives and works in Glasgow. Concerned with a shifting constellation of relations, such as those between camera and subject, human and animal, or autobiography and ethnography, Margaret Salmon’s films often examine the gendered, emotive dynamics of social interactions and representational forms. Solo exhibitions of her work have been held at institutions including DCA (2018/19), Tramway (2018) Staatsgalerie Stuttgart (2015); Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, USA (2011); Witte de With Centre for Contemporary Art, Rotterdam (2007); Whitechapel Art Gallery, London (2007) and Collective Gallery, Edinburgh (2006). Her work has been featured in film festivals and major international survey exhibitions, including the Berlin Biennale (2010) and Venice Biennale (2007) London Film Festival (2018, 2016, 2014). Salmon won the inaugural MaxMara Art Prize for Women in 2006, was recently shortlisted for the Jarman Award 2018 and the 2019 Margaret Tait Award.
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All films in the series ‘The ruined land: the land in ruins’
Friday 18 October 2024, 1pm
Film Screening: La Grande Illusion (1hr 53 minutes), 1937; by Jean Renoir.
La Grande Illusion takes place in a German fortress where two French aviators – aristocratic Boeldieu (Pierre Fresnay) and working-class Breton lieutenant Maréchal (Jean Gabin) – are held captive by monocled Captain von Rauffenstein (played by the silent film director Erich von Stroheim). With an introduction by Film Curator Alice Butler. Free, book on Eventbrite or come on the day subject to availability.
Friday 22 November 2024, 1pm
Film Screening: Foragers (64 mins), 2022; by Jumana Manna
‘Foragers’ depicts the dramas around the practice of foraging for wild edible plants in Palestine/Israel with wry humor and a meditative pace. Shot in the Golan Heights, the Galilee and Jerusalem, it moves between fiction, documentary and archival footage to portray the impact of Israeli nature protection laws on these customs. With an introduction and post-screening Q+A with Film Curator Alice Butler. Free, book on Eventbrite or come on the day subject to availability.Friday 10 January 2025, 1pm
Shouting at the Ground (21 mins), 2017; by Graeme Arnfield
In a peat bog in North West England a Spanish woman was murdered, her body buried and subsumed into the treacherously dense ecological matter. A matter which labours have extracted for centuries, selling this fertile material as fuel worldwide; a material which upon burning releases timeless carbon deposits into our increasingly precarious and damaged ecosphere. After laying dormant under the rich dark peat for an unknown amount of time a body returned to the surface but its identity had become dislocated; it has become entwined with the history of its material host. With an introduction and post-screening Q+A with Film Curator Alice Butler and Graeme Arnfield. Free, book on Eventbrite or come on the day subject to availability.Friday 14 February 2025, 1pm
History of the Present (46 mins), 2023; by Maria Fusco and Margaret Salmon
An experimental feminist opera-film about class and conflict, ‘History of the Present’ has been made collaboratively by Maria Fusco and Margaret Salmon, featuring new compositions by Annea Lockwood, libretto by Maria Fusco and improvisational vocal work by Héloïse Werner. This intersectional, intergenerational feminist work forefronts working-class women’s voices to ask: who has the right to speak, and in what way? With an introduction and post-screening Q+A with Film Curator Alice Butler Maria Fusco and Margaret Salmon. Free, book on Eventbrite or come on the day subject to availability.…
