This special screening brings together distinct perspectives on how ritual and celebration reshape public space, memory, and identity in the UK. ‘New Territories (spectacle is king)’ by Rhea Storr (2025), ‘The Flora Faddy Furry Dance Day’ by Richard Philpott (1989), and ‘Syncopated Green’ by Arjuna Neuman (2022) recall personal and cultural histories and traditions as they explore Caribbean carnivals, a Cornish festival, and outdoor raves as sites of both joy and resistance.
The programme will be shown twice throughout the event from 4 to 6pm, with refreshments and an opportunity to gather together in the LUX garden.
Programme:
‘New Territories (spectacle is king)’, Rhea Storr (2025), 17 min
A summer in the life of a filmmaker weaving her way through six carnivals in England. ‘New Territories’ observes Caribbean cultural life celebrated and contested in public space. We witness multi stage soundsystems, Black Lives Matter floats, histories of violence and peace in the geography of local cities. This film is about how to (and how not to) make an image.
The film is inspired by Isaac Julien’s ‘Territories’, made with Sankofa Film and Video Collective in 1984. While Julien catalogues the antagonistic relationship between Black community and the police at Notting Hill Carnival, ‘New Territories’ considers the role of spectatorship turned consumerism in laying the ground in which Black and Caribbean identities are defined.
‘The Flora Faddy Furry Dance Day’, Richard Philpott (1989), 10 min
Using only music and image, the film follows the structure of the Helston Flora Day and its Furry (or Faddy) Dance (the largest and most ancient ritual dance still performed in Britain today), recalling the spiritual sources of the Celtic Spring festival of Beltane that are deep within all of us – its ritual of purification, fertility, the triumph of Life over Death and the victory of Light over Darkness […] Emphasising the dance/music repetitions, the film stimulates collective unconscious emotions and is finally overwhelmed in an expression of ritual ecstasy.
Syncopated Green, Arjuna Neuman (2024), 14 min
Syncopated Green calls on the history of outdoor free parties to re-describe the English Countryside. The film listens to rave music, past and present, to help forget the official portrayal of England as picturesque, nostalgic, white, and rural. These traditional images of a “proper” England not only prop up the walls of national museums still today, but they also feed a growing conservatism that sustains Imperial fantasies, slavery legacies and Brexit realities. […] Syncopated Green aims to include rave music into the English landscape genre and tradition – turning imperial history inside out. Rave music and its wider culture, importantly, celebrates black and brown artists and audiences, and has done so since its inception. Somewhere between a music video, a memoir, and an essay, the film asks, how might the current socio-political situation and looming future be different if we had other histories to lean on and dance with?
Curated by Sara Ismail and Jaison Washington, Collection & Archive Assistants. Sara and Jaison’s roles at LUX are supported by Art Fund.
Ticket Information:
Tickets: General – £6, Concession – £3
Concession tickets are offered for those who might experience barriers in attending. To make participation in the event as accessible as possible, you won’t be asked for any proof or ID – we just ask that you are honest.
Here are the questions to think about when planning to purchase a concession ticket:
I may stress about meeting my basic needs but still regularly achieve them.
I may have some debt but it does not prohibit attainment of basic needs.
I am able to afford non-essential expenses, such as dining out or entertainment activities.
I have very limited expendable income.
I rarely buy new items.
Artist Biographies:
Rhea Storr explores Black and Mixed-race cultural representation with an interest in the in-between, the culturally ineffable, translation, format and aesthetics. She is concerned with performance, costume and the politics of masquerade. In particular she has employed carnival as a means to articulate a complex relationship between Britain and the Caribbean that underlines the importance of location. She also images Black and Mixed-race bodies in rural spaces. Often working in photochemical film, Rhea Storr considers counter-cultural ways of producing moving-image.
Selected exhibitions/screenings include: BFI London Film Festival, Artists’ Film International, Hamburg International Short Film Festival, European Media Art Festival, Museum of African American History and Culture and Somerset House and Lisson Gallery. She is the winner of the Aesthetica Art Prize 2020 and the Louis Le Prince Experimental Film Prize. https://www.rheastorr.com
Richard Philpott is a filmmaker, writer and programmer. Born in Cornwall in 1955, he lived and worked in the UK, Malta, Portugal and Brazil. Since 1976, he has been producing experimental short films and politically active and innovative work for cinema and television. Philpott was a member of London Film Maker’s Co-operative, and founder of Archway Road Movie Group, Zooid Pictures Ltd., and the LFMC production unit. His work has been widely shown at international film festivals, cinematheques and universities throughout Europe, North America, Australia and Brasil, and on British and Hungarian national televisions.
Alongside his filmmaking, Philpott has worked as a researcher, media manager, and copyright consultant for institutions such as Oxford University Press and Harvard University. He served as President of the Oxford University Film Society and founded Jacksons Lane Film Club in London. He has written about film history, technology and ideology; arts funding policy and experimentation in film and television broadcasting, the life and work of Vincent van Gogh and Wagner.
Arjuna Neuman was born on an airplane, that’s why he has so many passports. He is an artist, filmmaker, and writer. Recent solo exhibitions include CCA Glasgow and Glasgow International, Scotland; Showroom Gallery, London; Belkin Gallery and Or Gallery, Vancouver; TPW Gallery, Toronto, MACBA, Barcelona, forthcoming at Kunsthalle Wien, Austria and Santiago Modern, Chile. Recent biennials include Hacer Noche, Mexico; Ural Industrial Biennial, Russia; Lubumbashi Biennial, DWC; Bergen Assembly, Norway; Sharjah Biennial, UAE; Venice Biennial, Italy and Qalandia Biennial, Palestine. Notable group shows include at the Naples Museum, Italy; Centre Pompidou, Paris; Istanbul Modern, Turkey; MAAT, Portugal; Whitechapel Gallery, Bold Tendencies and LUX, all in London amongst many others. His work is held in the Belkin Collection and Platform UK collection. As a writer he has published essays in Relief Press, Into the Pines Press, The Journal for New Writing, Art Voices, Flaunt, LEAP, Hearings, World Records, Umbau and e-flux. He has mixtapes essays on Dublab, Radio Alhara and NTS. And he is the co-founder of www.archiveofbelonging.org – a resource database for migrants and refugees.
Access Information:
Auditory/Visual Access: We have hearing loops in the black box, a large print guide and magnifying glasses available in the space.
Sensory Access: Please note that the exhibition space is very dark, and the sound/noise volume is adjusted to a higher level.
You can find general access information here
If you have any access needs to attend our events please contact us at +44(0)20 3141 2960 or [email protected]
