Jarman Awards 2026
24 October 2026
Ilona Sagar, The Body Blow (2022), video stil
Discover the incredible diversity within the world of artists’ filmmaking in the UK, with a presentation of the work of the shortlist of this year’s Film London Jarman Award, which comes with a £10,000 prize.
Inspired by visionary British filmmaker Derek Jarman, the Award recognises and supports artists working with the moving image. The shortlisted artists illustrate the spirit of inventiveness within moving image, highlighting the breadth of creativity and craftsmanship the medium has to offer, as well as its powerful ability to engage and provoke audiences.
The artists shortlisted this year are: Sadia Pineda Hameed, Ilona Sagar, Rhea Storr and Alia Syed. The programme will also feature a talk with Ilona
About the works in the Touring Programme
Rhea Storr, Okay Keskidee! Let Me See Inside (2025)
Okay Keskidee! Let Me See Inside is a personal account of Black community spaces in the UK, focusing on Caribbean diaspora. By visiting the site of the former Keskidee Centre (a Black arts centre in Islington, London) that is now luxury apartments, the film considers the conditions which allowed this historical space to thrive. Okay Keskidee explores the economic and social reasons which have made gathering in physical space difficult, showing that histories of arts organising go hand in hand with political discourse. Made using optical printing and rostrum cameras, the work uses analogue film processes to address slow ways of thinking around contemporary subjects. Considering the personal connections formed in using these now-obsolete techniques, the film asks whether the digital realm can replace a physical community presence and produce an accessible archive for a new generation.
Sadia Pineda Hameed, Moving Sound (2025)
Moving Sound is a speculative work set across 1980s and near-future Wales, shot on super 16mm film. In the film, sounds of present-day anti-colonial and anti-capitalist strategies for mining strikes are transmitted from ecological sound collective Soundcamp's streamboxes to the past via an underground, time-travelling broadcast. In the 1980s, workers build DIY receivers from Moving Sound portable audio devices, which they use to distribute the broadcast around sites of production and the everyday. Moving Sound blurs fictional 16mm and archival 8mm footage into covert sonic action, exploring how organising converges and enacts across geographies, temporality, fantasy and reality.
Alia Syed, The Dhaba - 1st Chapter: Mr Sharif and 2nd Chapter: Mr Bhari (2025)
The Dhaba (roadside Cafe) is a poetic chronicle documenting the migration of two men to Glasgow. Arriving at different historic moments from the Indian subcontinent, their testimonies shed light on the effects of ever-changing British immigration legislation; the lived experience of the interviewees revealing the systematic obfuscations of colonialism and on-going racism.
The Dhaba is part of Syed’s larger The Ring in the Fish project, commissioned by CCA, Glasgow, which encompasses 16mm vignettes, photographs and audio interviews. The Dhaba veers away from traditional documentary forms, centring memory and the role imagination holds in migration. The work counterpoints workplace rhythms of communal kitchen work and the concentrated isolation of domestic piece work, with an equestrian statue of Lord Roberts, celebrating his role in putting down what the British call The Indian Mutiny and what Indians refer to as The First War of Independence in 1858, highlighting Syed's interest in architectures of the built environment, as a vessel for both personal and public memorialisation.
Ilona Sagar, Other Actors (2025)
Other Actors explores the links between bodies and buildings, health and architecture through the lens of Paimio Sanatorium Finland. Designed by Alvar and Aino Aalto and completed between 1929 and 1933, the sanatorium represents a radical shift in design for health. Conceived as an 'instrument for healing' the Aaltos' proposed an architecture designed not for the verticality of the healthy body but for the horizontal perspective of the sick. At the time of filming, the sanatorium is at a significant moment in its transition from hospital to a new purpose. Folding together historical research, professional and lived experience, Other Actors is informed by Aalto University School of Engineering, Kalasatama Undocumented Migrants Clinic and Tuberculosis Research Groups at Leicester University and Imperial College London. Through these intersecting perspectives, the film asks us to consider what we do with the architectural legacies of modernism that linger in our cultural imaginary, and how we can platform those hidden behind its visual facades.
