The artists shortlisted this year are Arwa Aburawa and Turab Shah, Karimah Ashadu, Onyeka Igwe, Morgan Quaintance, George Finlay Ramsay and Hope Strickland.
Inspired by visionary British filmmaker Derek Jarman, the award recognises and supports artists working with the moving image. This year’s shortlist embodies the sense of experiment and adventure within that artists’ moving image can offer — an unbroken link between the creativity of the earliest days of cinema and the boundaries of the medium today.
The winner of the Film London Jarman Award will be announced on 25 November and be awarded a £10,000 prize. The award is presented in partnership with the Whitechapel Gallery.
About the films
Informed by interviews with first-generation migrants living in London, Arwa Aburawa and Turab Shah’s I Carry It With Me Everywhere (2022) looks at the timeless search for home and belonging amongst an environment of displacement.
In Machine Boys (2024), Karimah Ashadu enters the underground community of motorbike taxi drivers, a forbidden practice in Lagos, and delivers a visceral portrait of masculinity and precarious labour in Nigeria’s patriarchal culture.
Elsewhere Onyeka Igwe’s archival collage film The Miracle on George Green (2022) presents a picture of the protests and collective resistance to the building of the M11 link road in Hackney, expanding out to consider global histories of protest.
Hope Strickland’s a river holds a perfect memory (2024) meanders gently across waterways in Jamaica, from a leisurely raft on the Martha Brae River to a night-time boat trip in Falmouth’s bioluminescent lagoon. Shifting focus to the impact of industry on the waters of northern England, the film uses water to explore the entanglement of these supposedly disparate communities.
Morgan Quaintance’s Repetitions (2022) dissects formal elements of film in a heightened sequence of flickering images and sound loops which speak to social histories of industrial and physical labour.
Shot in a 16th Century manor house in the South Downs, George Finlay Ramsay’s 16mm film Nursted, from the sleep side (2023) takes us through the dark corridors and dusty shelves of the former home of two bohemian artists, reflecting on its history as it falls into disrepair and the fading memories of its inhabitants.
Part of Baltic Cinema’s Currents strand, presenting new films from across the world.
Level 1 Cinema
Doors open 6.30pm; Film starts 6.45pm. Baltic Kitchen is open until 6.30pm for drinks, which you are welcome to take up to the cinema.
