We realised the power of it: Derry Film and Video Workshop

30 Mar-22 Sep 2024

Overview

'We realised the power of it' deals with the history and archive of the radical film collective Derry Film and Video Workshop. The project includes footage, photographs and documents that trace its history, exploring subjects such as gender, class, collective organising, the Irish ‘national question’ and the legacies of imperialism.

IMMA presents We realised the power of it, an exhibition-project by Sara Greavu and Ciara Phillips dealing with the history and archive of the radical film collective, Derry Film and Video Workshop. This installation of archive material includes footage, photographs and documents that trace a history of the workshop, exploring concerns with gender, class, collective organising, the Irish ‘national question’ and the legacies of imperialism.

The Derry Film and Video Workshop, established in 1984 was a women-led film production company formed under the terms of the 1982 Workshop Declaration, which also sustained projects such as the Black Audio Film Collective and Sankofa Film and Video Collective. Largely omitted from the histories of these regional/minority/Black-British/diaspora workshops as well as from records of feminist counter-cinema, the DFVW explored overlapping political tensions, radical self-representation and resistance and offered a nuanced depiction of these complex forces at work in the specific context of Derry.