Output details

NLR film

NLR is a development of my interdisciplinary research into the intertwining of memory, history, politics, economics and representation in the production of urban space. Drawing on strands in experimental Northern Irish and British filmmaking (e.g. Robin Wylie, Bill Miskelly, Alan Clark, Patrick Keiller), and on diverse readings of the urban generally and Belfast specifically (Henri Lefebvre, David Harvey, Nigel Thrift, Guy Debord; Emrys Jones, Greg McLaughlin & Stephen Baker) it arrives at new ways of constructing and communicating imaginative knowledges, through innovative, experimental elaboration of filmic narrative and space.

NLR defines a highly original area of research: how to foreground and explore through film the contradictions shaping urban space, in a part of the city explicitly framed by its monolithic political self-image, without simply repeating that image as visual cliché. A primary aim of NLR is to discern, examine and produce new ways of understanding the ‘unity of atmosphere’ of a specific enclave of the city. To do this it must not only formulate strategies for exceeding the representational habits of a city where ‘Politics’ is so narrowly defined, and where representation became such a predictable affair; it must adopt an entirely new approach. This experiential, syncretic method, which informs and is informed by my written research (see Jewesbury & Porter), is quite distinct to prevailing social-scientific analytical models of ‘post-conflict’ Belfast (e.g. Peter Shirlow, Dominic Bryan).

Methodologically and formally this work has significance in a range of practical and theoretical fields. But the work’s concentration on the meaning of ‘public’ and ‘private’ in the perpetually-regenerating city mean that it has a unique focus, with relevance especially through its screenings outside Ireland. Following its initial exhibition in Belfast, the film has been exhibited at the Museo Chiado, Lisbon, and at the BLIND SPOT film festival in Skopje, Macedonia.