Re-shift, Re-calibrate
Part Six: Jenny Handley & Basim Magdy
Curated by Myriam Mouflih
Part One →
10—12 Aug
Samra Mayanja
Touda Bouanani
Part Two →
11—13 Aug
Geoff Clout
Joe Namy
David Steans
Part Three →
12—14 Aug
Amelia Crouch
Jack Pell
Tabita Rezaire
James Thompson
Part Four →
13—15 Aug
Sophie Chapman
& Kerri Jefferis
Rhian Cooke
Karrabing Film Collective
Part Five →
14—16 Aug
Bethan Hughes
Evan Ifekoya
& SJ Rahatoka
Joanne Lee
Part Six →
15—17 Aug
Jenny Handley
Basim Magdy
Unless otherwise indicated, Closed Captions are available for all films. Switch them on via the ‘CC’ icon in the video playbar.
Audio Accompaniment
To accompany today’s films we asked a few friends to read poems which might help to sooth a restless night, and brought them together with a couple of archival readings:
• Myriam Mouflih reads Isobel Neviazsky
• Edwin Denby (archive)
• Khadijah Ibrahiim
• Bernadette Mayer (archive)
• Ian Duhig
• Ahmad Sujai reads Ajip Rosidi (in Indonesian)
Unless otherwise indicated, Closed Captions are available for all films. Switch them on via the ‘CC’ icon in the video playbar.
New Acid
Basim Magdy, 2019, Egypt, 14 min
Do you remember life before plastic plants and origami flowers?” Basim Magdy’s latest short imagines a nostalgia-tinged reality, a time on earth after humans, where animals and bots communicate through emoji-filled text messages. The zany language they speak might lead us astray, but we can detect a certain yearning for interaction. Enlightened through sleep deprivation, these beings find themselves trapped − but where? In a zoo or a stream of data? (Julian Ross)
Basim Magdy (1977, Assiut, Egypt) lives and works between Basel and Cairo. His work appeared recently in solo exhibitions at Museum of Art, Architecture and Technology, Lisbon; La Kunsthalle Mulhouse, France; MCA Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; MAXXI National Museum of the 21st Century Arts, Rome; Jeu de Paume, Paris; CAPC Museum of Contemporary Art, Bordeaux; Deutsche Bank KunstHalle, Berlin; Arnolfini, Bristol. His films have screened at Tate Modern, Locarno Film Festival, New York Film Festival, International Film Festival Rotterdam, ICA London among others.
Closed captions are not available for this film.
Night Time Radio
Jenny Handley, 2020, UK, 17 min
As the driver navigates the roads, they encounter invisible aural boundaries and borders. The radio channels create a map of signals across a small part of Leeds where the film is shot. Some channels are afforded the privilege of a strong signal that catches any roaming radio receiver. For example, the car radio is able to pick up five BBC Radio channels, however smaller local stations can only just whisper through the receiver; questioning an apparent hierarchy of information sources and the importance of radio as a mass communication device, a political device.
This film also explores the element of chance and randomness that occurs when a listener cycles through radio channels, sleepwalking into unchosen conversation, music and news. The listeners participation with radio is often one of leisure, habit or background noise. However, the nature of the transmission is the opposite. It is curated from start to finish, between programmes, music choices, news. Heard in combination with other sounds, every radio transmission is received differently, dictated by a set of circumstances: environment, location, time, signal strength – creating a unique aural and visual territory. (Jenny Handley)
Jenny Handley is a Leeds-based artist, working across the mediums or sound, moving image and installation. She studied Fine Art at the University of Leeds and is co-founder of Freehold Projects, an artist-led project space and collective in Leeds.
This project is part of Film Feels Connected, a UK-wide cinema season, supported by the National Lottery and BFI Film Audience Network. Explore all films and events at filmfeels.co.uk