Open City Documentary Festival 2023 marks the second year of an ongoing series, commissioning a filmmaker previously screened at the festival to create the trailer for the following edition.

Researcher and artist-filmmaker Hope Strickland has previously screened If I could name you myself (I would hold you forever, 2021) and I’ll be Back! (2022) at the past two editions of the festival. She sat down with Open City’s Marketing Manager Laverne Caprice to discuss the shooting process, ideation and thoughts behind the 2023 trailer.

Laverne Caprice: I thought we could start by speaking about what brought you to shoot the trailer in film, why 16mm?

Hope Strickland: I really, really, enjoy it because there’s something about working with analogue that just feels inherently more tactile, and more intimate. You have the sense of those materialities or textures and I think it allows for a slightly different way of thinking about film or what you’re watching also means that when I’m in the actual action of filming it feels quite different. I have a small Bolex which means I can film closer… it feels more personal.

LC: And film is very expensive too…

HS: Yes! It’s like precious material because it’s expensive, and you don’t want to waste it. It’s just the way my brain works as I’m filming, to be much more hyper concentrated, I’m much more engaged in what I’m doing and that I really appreciate. And I really appreciate that I just have the three minutes of the roll… I can’t keep going. I just have to work with that amount, which also feels quite nice considering it’s a short trailer. I didn’t have too much material to be playing around with at the end.

LC: Do you find that because you only have three minutes per roll that you have to be more meticulous? How do you pinpoint things beforehand?

HS: I find that I tend to watch first rather than going straight in with the filming. For example, with the bird ringing in the trailer, the first few times I just watched and listened to what else I needed to get. So I’m watching with the camera, but I’m not actually using the material continuously.

LC: The trailer is a beautiful soft, muted grade – did you always envision Holdings to look this way?

HS: I think that comes down to the 16mm and kind of knowing that it’s going to feel this specific dewey-ness, it also just feels more human in that way. I think that’s what’s really important about those muted colours. I worked with a friend Sophie [Broadgate] on it. She did the grade, and the first round that came back was very saturated and “cinema” and it’s just not what I’m interested in. I think because I come from a documentary background I’m much more interested in a lucidity or a realness than something super cinematic.

LC: Often, we tend to have the connotation that birds mostly fly and are distant yet within this piece they are handled, often still and stationary – was this intentional?

HS: At first, I wanted to film the parakeets in London, because I’m kind of obsessed with them. I was obsessed with them in the way that they connect to the human world. I guess they’re kind of the reaction that my dad has when he sees them, which is to like a trigger, much like an emotional response to his childhood in Jamaica. That is what I was interested in really, it was never really so much the birds. But there’s something we don’t often see birds in that way, we see them as quite separate to us but actually, there’s lots of situations where they are held and handled. That kind of meeting of worlds felt quite fun in terms of shifting frames of reference for what’s going on in nature around us that we might not be privy to.

LC: There’s an old anecdote about how the parakeets in Richmond Park ended up there by accident, someone left their window open and they flew out and began to breed – that’s why they’re here still to this day.

HS: Yes, when I was researching about them there were so many little stories almost like myths around their origin. I just think about it in terms of migration, and their place against the birds around them. There is no evidence that they are affecting local populations but there’s one place in Spain where they’re causing some disruption because they like nesting in the same place as a species of bats, but they also eat the bats. They’re causing a bit of a nuisance there but in the UK, they’re fine, I asked the bird ringer if he often interacted with them, but he said no which was a shame, parakeets just fly in a straight line so they’re very easy to catch!

LC: Within the first few shots we see a specimen being put into a bag, I’m intrigued as to why this is needed for the birds, are there special measures put in place to keep them in “good” condition? We get some context in the form of voiceover but what is your view on this procedure?

HS: Within museums and conservation practices, in general, there are very specific measures in order to preserve specimens, such as temperature-controlled environments. All of the birds are kept in these containers in alphabetical order, so they’re not sorted in terms of where they’re from, or the collection that they’re part of. On the one hand, I agree with these kinds of practices as a way to maintain standards and seeing as they are custodians of these specimens I feel that the only good that can come out of them in the aftermath of this brutality of them being killed and taxidermied in the first place is if they’re useful for researchers and science. But there’s also this kind of flip-side, and it’s a whole conversation, that is around repatriation where museums give things back. Actually, with that collection of birds shown in the trailer, the curator was then in conversations with the University of the West Indies to give a lot of the specimens back.

LC: You worked with the British Ornithology Trust and the Liverpool Nation Museum on this, how did that relationship form?

HS: I’ve worked with Liverpool Museums before they are really great and approachable, there isn’t really a process it’s basically this whole sending weird emails to random email addresses! I found the person from the British Ornithology Trust and learnt about bird ringing, which is what I’m showing in the film, a ring with a number is attached to the bird and when you catch them you take their vital measurements such as their weight, body mass index, whether they’re nesting, brooding, their gender and location. It all then gets inputted into a national database and it’s cross referenced around the world. You can train to be a bird ringer by going out with someone who is qualified as a trainer. So, on the British Ornithology Trust, there’s a portal where you can see where different trainers live, and you can message them directly, people just do it voluntarily. It’s this network of people who love birds. Mark, the man I worked with, was retired and replied to me straightaway and we went out 5am the very next day.

LC: All that data kept by people voluntarily who all have a shared interest in birds!

HS: Yes, it’s pretty amazing. You can just use the directory to find the nearest Bird Ringer near you…

LC: Within the sound mix there’s a subtle balance between voice and natural sound, why was this important?

HS: The sound is done by Felix Taylor and I guess because I have a background in Visual Anthropology I feel like I’m always toeing the line between artist’s film and documentary. Originally, there was actually a lot more music and I worked with Felix to balance things back out. I really liked that kind of balance between nature and our attempt to control/sustain or interact with the things around us. I’ve also been listening to a lot of Kali Malone who’s an organ drone musician, and I’ve also been thinking more about soundscapes.

LC: The cut between the archival footage and the modern-day shots with voice overlay is seamless and informative, yet intimate. As both a researcher and artist-filmmaker why do you feel it’s important to work with archives?

HS: I think I will always work with archives. It’s wonderful to be able to point specifically to a time or in this case, I think the incorporation of the two sets of footage allows a conversation about how we engage with birds, and how we continue to engage with exotic sized birds or birds from different environments. Working with archives and having a look into them scratches the academic part of my brain. I actually think all of the subjects in the trailer are archival in some ways, the shot towards the end with the notebook where he’s writing down all the data, it all goes into a national database. Everything is retained and stored.

LC: The note taking that leads to the shot at the end of letting the bird fly away…

HS: I felt it was really important to show him releasing the bird at the end, because I do think it’s important to be critical as well. In order to gather knowledge or to produce knowledge in these ways and then to film can feel quite extractive. There’s the handling of the bird and making sure they’re held in a certain way, so it doesn’t hurt them. In addition, there’s the aspect of archiving and retaining knowledge, I think there’s something inherently sticky about the process but also it’s important that these things are logged.

LC: What’s next for you, are you working on anything else?

HS: I’m working on two films; one is a commission and the other I’m trying to find funding for. They move with lots of things I’ve done before, particularly around wanting to work across 16mm, digital and archival. I guess I feel ready to work on a bigger scale. The films compare the north of England, where I’m from, to Cockpit Country in Jamaica which is right next to where my dad is from. It’s a place that has a very high percentage of Jamaica’s biodiversity and historically it’s also an area where Maroons would flee to. It’s incredibly mountainous, steep and gorgeous. The first film looks at waterpower and capitalist production and compares the two spaces. The second film is more about grief and dispossession from land and mining. The North has more of a historical situation with mining and land dispossession whereas in Cockpit Country it’s happening right now with bauxite mining. I’m really enjoying exploring these stories it so far, I feel finally ready.

Hope Strickland’s work is concerned with how landscapes can inform us of political dispossession and colonial narratives; as well as the way working across archival, 16mm and digital film practices reveals temporal fractures and intimacies. Hope Strickland’s work has been screened at festivals including the 59th New York Film Festival, London Film Festival and the 60th and 61st Ann Arbor Film Festivals.

You can watch the full Open City Documentary Festival trailer here.