Phil Kieran
Date: 06/02/2026 10:56
Musician Phil Kieran released his album "The Strand Cinema" in March 2023. For the album's launch Kieran collaborated with a diverse range of artists to create accompanying films using the Digital Film Archive as a base. Kieran reflects on the project below.
Working on the Strand Cinema project reminded me how powerful collaboration can be when people come together around moving-image heritage. Although the music existed first, the project only began to take shape once the filmmakers responded to it, each bringing their own discipline and imagination. We structured the show loosely around the idea of the past, the present and the future. It felt natural to begin with the Digital Film Archive — the images grounding us in a shared past before the piece gradually moved into contemporary material and, eventually, into more speculative, technology-driven futures.
Because the Strand is the oldest functioning cinema in Northern Ireland, the archive footage at the beginning carried extra weight. Those early scenes weren’t just “the past” in a conceptual sense; they were directly linked to the building we were sitting in. The audience was watching fragments of earlier generations in the very place where many of those memories would once have been made. For me, that connection added a quiet but important layer to the work.
As the show progressed, the filmmakers had complete freedom: some continued to draw from the archive, others created new footage, animations, dance and CGI. What mattered was that their voices, and their interpretations, shaped the journey. Performing the final piece with the Ulster Orchestra reinforced that sense of shared authorship — my music, the visuals, the archive, the orchestra, the building and its community all in dialogue.
What lingers for me now is the memory of how many people shaped the project from so many different angles — the filmmakers who built the visual world, the Ulster Orchestra who lifted the music, the DFA who opened the door to our shared history, and the Strand team who made the whole thing feel rooted in place. It was a rare moment where everyone’s contribution genuinely mattered, and the piece became richer than anything I could have imagined on my own.
Watch "Last Words" from "The Strand Cinema"
View more from "The Strand Cinema" project here.