Video Jam Presents ‘Spaces-in-between’ at Royal Northern College of Music
Tom Grieve, Cinema Editor
Movies meet music at RNCM this February as Video Jam presents an evening consisting of five commissioned short films by artists based around the world, each scored by a different UK composer. The event promises a reflection on themes as wide ranging as home and history, desire and estrangement, nationhood and mythology, extinction and exile. Content-wise, we are told to expect films that “explore and re-imagine a variety of indeterminate, contested or hidden spaces: deserted opera houses in the Middle East and incomplete cityscapes in Eastern Europe, ancient mythological hinterlands and places now only accessible via Google Maps.”
The event is developed in partnership with both British Council’s Film + Music Programme and the RNCM. It is Video Jam’s — ‘audio-visual masterminds’ according to Time Out — first event in Manchester in three years, and follows a Manchester Culture Award. In keeping with the event series’ commitment to programming emerging and mid career artists, there will be premieres of new works by Saodat Ismailova, Joe Namy, Christin Turner, Razan AlSalah and Oleksiy Radynski, while on the RNCM stage Video Jam have curated an eclectic mix of approaches to sound and music, including Lafawndah, Nabihah Iqbal, Seaming To, CHAINES, Kelly Jayne Jones and RNCM students.
