Booking fees
£1.50 booking fee per online/phone transaction.
No fee when tickets are booked in person.
Booking fees are per transaction and not per ticket. If your booking contains several events the highest booking fee will apply. The booking fee may be reduced on certain events. Members do not pay booking fees.
Programme
Tropikos (UK 2016 Dir John Akomfrah (Smoking Dogs Films) 36 min English)
Set against the waterways of South West England and the coasts of Africa, Tropikos presents a haunting reimagination of 16th-century encounters between British and African peoples during the dawn of the transatlantic slave trade. This was an era during which Britain’s rise as a global seafaring power caused the displacement and enslavement of millions of African people being displaced across the Atlantic. Through meticulously crafted tableaux and luxurious Renaissance costumes contracted with the coarse, utilitarian garments of enslaved Africans, Akomfrah interrogates how fashion served as both a marker of status and a tool of dehumanisation.
To Pick a Flower (Philippines 2021 Dir Shireen Seno 17 min English)
Using archival images from the American occupation of the Philippines (1898–1946), Shireen Seno’s film essay draws parallels between the commodification and extraction of forests and the subjugation of people. The film highlights the role of fashion in these histories, inviting reflection on how self-representation can perpetuate or challenge ecological and cultural harm. The act of picking a flower becomes a metaphor for the violent transformation of landscapes into resources under imperial rule. Through its highly evocative photographs, To Pick a Flower critiques the medium’s complicity in both documenting and shaping Western ideologies of domination over nature.
Timeline (UK 2021 Dir Osbert Parker 10 min English)
Commissioned by London’s Migration Museum, Timeline traces lines formed by nature and culture – cracks in walls, tree branches, geological strata, outstretched strings or lines printed on textiles – to symbolically evoke British migration as a ‘journey’ that is ever-evolving yet also anchored to the earth and soil. Through its heightened materiality, Parker’s imagery conveys the physically visceral, environmental and social impacts of migration, positioning fashion and fabric as a subtle thread within these narratives – highlighting how clothing carries cultural identity across borders.
