Screening and Fundraiser

Toward The Forest
Screening and fundraiser
With films by Kadeem Oak, Dan Guthrie, Hope Strickland and James Jordan Johnson.

Tickets £11.50

Join us for a special fundraiser event in support of Jamaica’s recent hurricane devastation.

Presented by FormaHQ resident, James Jordan Johnson, ‘Toward The Forest’ will take place from 7pm-10pm on Thursday 27 November at FormaHQ with films by James alongside Kadeem Oak, Dan Guthrie, Hope Strickland.

All proceeds will be donated to Jacana Relief Fund and Trans Wave Jamaica.

//Line Up

Hope Strickland, 'a river holds a perfect memory'. 17min 18sec
Meanders gently across waterways in Jamaica, through leisure activities such as rafting on the Martha Brae River and a night-time boat trip in Falmouth’s bioluminescent Lagoon. In the UK, archival footage tracks industrial impact upon the landscape in Northern England - as water becomes a resource and a reservoir is constructed in Rochdale.

Kadeem Oak, 'Effra Creek! Effra Wash! Effra Splash!'. 19min 06sec
Reflects upon the River Effra, a lost tributary of the River Thames. The project examines the cultural and sonic ecology of the river's course as it runs from Norwood, through Brixton and Vauxhall; exploring Afro-Caribbean histories and themes of industry, community, landscape and memory.

Dan Guthrie, 'Coaley Peak (A Fragment)'. 6min 18sec
Selected by Exeter Phoenix for their 2021 Artists’ Moving Image commission, Dan’s idea was to make a film about Blackness and belonging in the English countryside, taking a family photo of some of his relatives at the Gloucestershire viewpoint Coaley Peak as a starting point. Whilst making the film, something happened.

James Jordan Johnson, 'Fray Tongue'. 19min 33sec
Filmed in the summer of 2025 in Donnington, Lincolnshire. Fray Tongue takes its name from the dual etymology of the word fray. Fray meaning a fabric worn at its edges but is also used to infer when a male deer rubs its antlers on a tree to mark its territory. The film brings together a confluence of cultural, political and familial understandings and experiences of what constitutes the rural experience. Displaying landscapes through a slow passage of time that subtly infers migrant agricultural labour, mono cropping, syncretic belief systems and understanding many rural landscapes as sites of demarcation.

Image Credit: 'a river holds a perfect memory' by Hope Strickland. Film still. Image courtesy the artist.