RE/POSIT/ORY - reframing the film archive
16 July 2024
The Box has just launched a new digital film commission called 'RE/POSIT/ORY' which visitors can watch in the Media Lab gallery throughout the summer of 2024.
Produced by Imperfect Cinema, with music composition and sound design by Patrick James Pearson, it’s been in development over the past six months as a part of our Reimaging the Film Archive programme, which is funded by the National Lottery and the BFI Screen Heritage Fund. The commission represents an important shift in our practice to strengthen the film archive's resilience and sustainability through greater diversity and representation.
RE/POSIT/ORY is a five-screen film installation by Allister Gall and Dan Paolantonio, co-founders and co-directors of the Imperfect Cinema film collective. Drawing from the extensive resources of the SWFTA film archive at The Box, the film seeks to reimagine the archive as a place of memory, absence, beauty and loss.
Working solely with archival 16mm and 35mm film footage that shows Plymouth and its surrounding area over a century, RE/POSIT/ORY examines the nature and purpose of moving image archives and their role in and significance to contemporary society. Central to the film is the exploration of issues of community, representation and diversity, and the challenging of historical and current power structures. What can we learn from the archive about the past, and how might this inform our future?
The film was directly informed by the reflections, discussions and ideas that emerged from a series of workshops facilitated by Imperfect Cinema in collaboration with a group of global majority people with lived experience of racism. It also included members of Culture Club, a group that is working actively with The Box to interrogate its collections and exhibitions through an anti-racist lens.
During the workshops, Léonie Prentice one of the lead participants highlighted the collection's duality by sharing the realities of global majority groups depicted in the clips, stating that: “The clips specific to the global majority were at times harrowing,” but also mentioning the joy of seeing an Asian family playing in the snow.
The moving image has the power to tell a story without words - a sentiment often felt among underrepresented communities. The moving image collections at The Box record people and lives in motion. They're evidence of undocumented communities and hidden treasures. RE/POSIT/ORY offers a window into the archive - uncovering what was, hinting at what can be and making these discoveries visible for everyone to engage with.
Zahra Khanum, RTFA Discovery Media Assistant
RE/POSIT/ORY will be screened throughout the summer of 2024 in The Box's Media Lab gallery.
• Learn more about Imperfect Cinema.
• Find out more about the work of Culture Club.
• Find out more about the Reimagining the Film Archive project.