Analogue in Depth takes up the question of “why black filmmakers should shoot analogue” to provoke a conversation about the uses that analogue film poses for makers and viewers in relation to black cinema. The seminar will also examine the broader field of black film in any format, as well as films by non-black filmmakers that supposedly address black life.

The seminar will be divided into three sections: an illustrated talk, panel discussion, and screening. During her talk, Jennifer Lauren Martin will survey several key works and discuss analogue film as a film language and strategy employed specifically by black filmmakers, as well as aesthetic trends and traps and the possibility of restitution. The following panel discussion will offer an opportunity to probe and unpick our relationship to these works and our positions as audience and makers. The seminar concludes with a screening at Close-Up Cinema featuring selected works referenced throughout the day. 

Seminar schedule:
11am-1pm: Illustrated talk by Jennifer Lauren Martin
2pm-4pm: Panel Discussion with Abiba Coulibaly, Hope Pearl Strickland, Martina (Judah) Attille, Matthew Barrington, and Jennifer Lauren Martin
6.15pm-8.15pm: Screening programme at Close-Up (please note that the screening element of the programme is ticketed separately) 

An early version of this programme was developed and programmed at not/nowhere, the black and POC-led analogue film workers’ cooperative. 

This event is available with the OCDF Bundle at Rich Mix: 6 events for £30. 

Abiba Coulibaly is a film programmer with a background in critical geography.

Filmmaker Martina (Judah) Attille is a British citizen and has lived in London since 1961. She graduated in 1983 from Goldsmiths University, London, where she produced her first film, By Any Other Name (1983). Attille became one of five founding members of the collective Sankofa Film & Video from 1983 to 1988, with Maureen Blackwood, Robert Crusz, Isaac Julian, and Nadine Marsh-Edwards.  Attille developed her skills in script editing in the role of Producer on the collective’s first feature, The Passion of Remembrance (1986). Her seminal work for Sankofa Film & Video is Attille’s Writer/Director debut, Dreaming Rivers (1988) which features actors Corinne Skinner Carter, Angela Wynter, Nimmy March, Roderick Hart and Stefan Kalipha. The film has an original computer-generated score by Composer Shirley Thompson, Costume Design by Lorna Lee Lesley, and Set Design by artist Sonia Boyce.

Matthew Barrington is a Cinema Curator at the Barbican and the Birkbeck Institute for the Moving Image.

Hope Pearl Strickland is an artist-filmmaker and researcher from Manchester, UK, working across archival, analogue and digital practices. A particular focus is given to re-entangling the supposedly disparate landscapes of Jamaica and the North of England, through an attention to labour migration, diasporic longing and resource extraction. Hope’s work has screened internationally at film festivals including the 59th New York Film Festival, BFI London Film Festival (2022), International Film Festival Rotterdam (2025) and Berwick Film and Media Arts Festival (New Cinema Awards, 2025). Hope was awarded the Aesthetica Emerging Art Prize in 2023 and shortlisted for the Jarman Award 2025.

Jennifer Lauren Martin is a visual artist and writer/director whose work grapples with questions of interpersonal belonging. Their practice spans fine art, film and writing. Lauren Martin’s moving image and film works have been screened at Tate Britain, London; Olympia Gallery, New York; The Douglas Hyde Gallery, Dublin; and LUX Moving Image, London, and at film festivals internationally, including BlackStar Film Festival, Philadelphia; S.O.U.L Fest, London; Alchemy, Hawick; RIDM, Montréal; EMAF, Osnabrück; and Kasseler Dokfest, Kassel. Solo exhibitions include Under the pink of my tongue, I found love, Kingsgate Workshops, 2022; TEETH, Primary, Nottingham, 2019 – 2020; and Channel 6, Turf Projects, London, 2019. Recent performances were held at Somerset House, London, 2025 and 2023; Matt’s Gallery, London, 2024; and NN Contemporary Art, Northampton, 2023, with previous public programmes at ICA London, South London Gallery, and The Showroom, London. They participated in residencies and fellowships with Triangle-Astérides, Marseille; the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Maine; Hospitalfield, Arbroath; the FLAMIN Fellowship, London, and more. Lauren Martin was awarded as a Film London Lodestar Artist Filmmaker (2021) and took part in We Are Parable x Channel 4’s Momentum scheme for black British filmmakers (2022). They are in residence at Somerset House Studios, a BAFTA Connect member, a co-director of not/nowhere, a black and POC-led film coop, and a senior tutor at the Ruskin School of Art, Oxford University.