LUX is proud to present a new film by artist Adam Lewis Jacob. Filmed in Bangladesh and Birmingham during 2020, Idrish (ইদ্রিস) is an urgent and timely reflection on the anti-deportation movement and anti-racist community action refracted through the story of veteran anti-deportation campaigner Muhammad Idrish.
Beginning with a reading of Bidrohi (The Rebel / “বিদ্রোহী”) a revolutionary Bengali poem written by Kazi Nazrul Islam in 1921 the film recounts Muhammad Idrish’s journey and fight to remain in the UK in the 1980s and the trade union led campaign that supported him. The campaign to stop Muhammad’s deportation received widespread support, including from his trade union NALGO (now UNISON). Documented by the Birmingham Trade Union Research Council’s video initiative, TURC Video, the fight was taken up nationally, creating a powerful moment of unity between the anti-racist and trade union movements.
Lewis Jacob and Idrish travelled to Bangladesh in 2020 to visit and film at locations significant to him, this is overlaid with his own testimony of a lifetime of campaigning. Addressing personal history and journey from Bangladesh to the UK in the broader consideration of rights and civil liberties, the film addresses the personal impact of policies which echo through time to the ‘hostile environment’ of present day Britain.
Developed through Lewis Jacob’s research into counter culture movements and drawing on the archives of the Birmingham Trade Union Resource Centre. The film weaves a complex tapestry of found materials from VHS to photographs and campaigning materials, deftly animating the aesthetics of historical resistance alongside Idrish’s personal narrative, and collapsing time and space to create an urgent montage of personal/political resistance. This is complemented by Claude Nouk’s sound design which mirrors the visual approach, looping and remixing archival sounds to add propulsive urgency to the film’s narrative.
The exhibition will also include a selection of ‘camera tapes’, unedited raw footage shot on U-matic tape and recently digitised by TURC video worker Marian Hall who along with Ranbir Bains, a student at the time, collaborated with Idrish to make the West Midlands Anti-deportation Campaign video. A series of contextual events will accompany the exhibition as well as a new essay by writer Jemma Desai.
Adam Lewis Jacob is an artist and filmmaker based in Glasgow and Poole. His work is about the structures that govern our lives and the countercultural figures that question them. He uses the camera to create a space where ideas and people can be brought together and unexpected relationships can occur, using improvisation, performance and sound to reinterpret research and reactivate histories. He is one of the founding members of Céline, an independent artist-run exhibition space in Glasgow. His work has been screened and exhibited at the Berwick Film and Media Arts festival, Ann Arbor Film Festival, Alchemy Film festival, Kochi-Muziris Biennale (India), Studio 55 (Korea), LUX (London) among others. In 2019 he was awarded the Cove Park Experimental Film and Moving Image residency and was co-commissioned by Vivid Projects and Animate as part of national film project WORK. In 2022 Adam will participate in the ESW/TOKAS residency program in Japan.
Opening Event: Sun 20 March 2022, 2-5pm, no booking required
Join us for a conversation with Adam Lewis Jacob, Muhammad Idrish, Claude Nouk and Jemma Desai at 3pm. Idrish (ইদ্রিস) will be on view from 2 to 5pm.
Idrish, Adam Lewis Jacob press release
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