Ross Thompson is a Poet who has collaborated with the Digital Film Archive on several projects over the years, beginning in 2017 with Coast and Sea. He speaks about his experiences below.
Anyone involved in writing of any kind will know that it tends to be a solitary profession. While we may not all be hammering away at a Smith-Corona in a Victorian garret, many practice our art by self-removal. The temptation to retreat to quiet spaces to focus on the craft, to zone out of conversations and experiences to consider instead how we might capture them in words necessitates solitude. Therefore, any opportunities for collaboration with other artists are welcome.
I first worked with the Digital Film Archive in 2017 on the Coast and Sea project: a poetic response to various footage of seaside towns in Northern Ireland. I found the process both rewarding and deeply emotive: immersing myself in home recordings was like conversing with ghosts, not only of people but also of places that have changed radically since their onscreen avatars were filmed. The resulting pieces, complemented by the work of composer Dáithí McGibbon, are charming and hypnotic.
Consequently, I jumped at the chance to work again with Northern Ireland Screen in 2021. In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, I curated a multidisciplinary project named A Silent War where each of the sixteen poems were recorded by fellow writers and my own infant daughter. The concept was to mark this frightening and bewildering event with voices from all over our island in their own space and time – kitchens, back gardens, airing cupboards – to document this surreal period of shared isolation. These audio recordings have since been adapted into a series of short educational films, again utilising footage from the vast trove meticulously catalogued by the DFA.
This process has necessitated an extensive dramatis personae of editors, musicians, visual artists and sign language interpreters, further expanding the act of collaboration in ways that I could not have foreseen. The irony, of course, is how a period of intense loneliness and separation could be marked by so many people coming together. On a personal note, it has been a wonderful challenge to bridge the written word and visual media yet I also hope that these films will be testament to the rich culture and history stored within the archive itself, ready to judder into life when replayed.
Ross wrote a poem to celebrate the Digital Film Archives 25th anniversary which is available to read below.
Cinématographe
On twenty-five years of the Digital Film Archive
1.
First, consider the texture of film stock:
how it ruffles with cigarette burns, pocks,
cinches and cue dots, all purled like the surface
of the pond into which Narcissus plunged.
The stitches and shmutz jitter like tetra
beneath the meniscus of Betacam
and Super 8, each dusted with imprints
of being hand-fed onto sprocket reels
and transfigured by carbon arc lamps.
2.
Next, pull focus on those in the foreground:
friendly ghosts at once within and without
the shades of time; a zoetrope gently
buffering, depicting Daniel dancing
in flames, monochrome and sepiatone,
gilded with age. A wedding guest, pie-eyed,
lantern-jawed, wick half-snuffed. A speedboat spears
the cusp of the Atlantic. A nonplussed
child goes nowhere on an amusement ride
for 8d a throw. Phantoms – resplendent
in polyester, appliqué and tweed –
applaud the swansong of the last steam train.
Sightseers, flourishing Jubilee flags,
traipse the line from beach to vanishing point,
unaware of their immortality.
3.
Now, try to imagine the amateur
Lumières piloting these cameras:
unseen régisseurs and faceless wizards
hidden inside molten curtains who chanced
to record stray moments as they fell through
the continuum. Hikers in the Mournes.
A pet dog braves the swash at the Devil’s
Churn. A lorry, overturned, spills its load
on the Glen Road. Miss Adrienne sets free
bichrome balloons into the troposphere.
A hundred years ago, swimmers emerge
from the noiseless, pale blank of Strangford Lough.
4.
Last, think on time itself frittering past.
Pause the scene projected on the wide screen.
Bathers at Downhill, vital and serene,
glimpsed on a reversal strip depicting
the silver verge of an vanishing world
before war, before digital eclipsed
analog, a precipice from which they
witnessed so many possible futures.
So many lives, so many memories
played and replayed on media fragile
as a silk kimono but tactile
and lambent as sunlight playing through pleached
treetops in Tollymore. A century
of testimonies captured through a lens
pointed towards colour and hope and joy.