WANDA collaborates with Northern Ireland Screen’s Digital Film Archive
Northern Ireland Screen’s Digital Film Archive have commissioned WANDA to cast a critical eye over the archive. We are delighted to present their new online collection that looks through the lens of gender representation. We hope the ideas they highlight encourage people to use the archive as their own tool to unpick how stories are told.
WANDA is a feminist film festival that takes place annually in Belfast. It was created in 2016 to bring new and archive films by female-identifying filmmakers to a diverse audience, to support women working in the film industry and to raise awareness of women’s rights issues in Ireland, north and south. Since then, WANDA has had three editions and welcomed guest filmmakers from across Ireland and around the world.
Laura O’Connor and Rose Baker of WANDA, said: “The archive represents the rich social, political and broadcasting history of Northern Ireland and is a trove of hidden gems. As feminist film programmers, a large part of our mission is to explore archive film in order to unearth ‘lost’ films by women and find a new audience for them. We also strive to show films that present women’s history, which so often suffers from erasure. This project has allowed us to delve into the archive, extract films we feel are meaningful and present them with our critical response, including two new video compositions ‘Work’ and ‘Girls’, and accompanying essays. We hope you enjoy the result and continue to investigate the archive!”
More collections will be rolled out over the next year on Northern Ireland Screen’s Digital Film Archive. Each guest curator will bring their own style and vision to our screen heritage.
To watch the collection, visit www.digitalfilmarchive.net/collection/wanda-140.
To see the videos and essays by Laura O’Connor and Rose Baker of WANDA, accompanied by Fiona mcDonnell’s illustrations, visit http://www.wandabelfast.com/nisdfa.html
