Film night at trs: sea and currents
Last month we transformed the gallery at The Royal Standard into a cinema of sorts, to bring together award-winning director Helen Kilbride and artist-filmmaker Anti-cool to present a curated selection of short films that explore our seas’ stories—ecology, culture and climate narratives.
We presented 4 films that night ( in running order)
Wind, Land and Sea (2022, 19 mins) – Film by Anti-Cool
A hybrid documentary using interviews and fictional narration to reflect on local climate change experience in Barrow, Cumbria.
Echo Tides (2017, 15 mins) - Film by Anti-Cool
The work is an experimental investigation of the artist’s ongoing fascination with the sea and the small communities whose lives are dependent on it. The film becomes an abstraction based on the power of memories linking the artist’s home in a small Japanese fishing town with a fishing community on the south coast of Britain.
Salt Marsh (2025, 10 mins) - Directed by Helen Kilbride
A poetic Super 8 film exploring queer ecology and identity in the salt marshes of The Wash, Norfolk, inspired by the legacy of Rachel Carson.
Green and White Salt (2022, 42 mins) - Film by Anti-Cool
Set in Aveiro, Portugal, this film focuses on a salt-making community through the eyes of a young girl. A quiet meditation on labour, care, and cultural disappearance, made in collaboration with local non-actors.
ARTIST BIO
HELEN KILBRIDE
Her art practice is rooted in exploring themes of class, gender, sexuality, ecology, activism, and archive. She is particularly interested in working with Super 8 film, which brings a tactile, nostalgic texture to her films.
One of the highlights of her career, Looking for Barbara (2021), a poignant 9-minute film, earned a nomination for Best of British at the prestigious Iris Prize. The film was subsequently screened on Channel 4 in 2023. Salt Marsh (2025), reveals complexities of queer and trans existence within the materiality of landscape, resulting in a poetic and reflective analysis of the interplay between identity and Eco structures.
Anti-cool
Anti-cool is a Japanese artist who creates primarily through collaborative activity. Through audio visual storytelling, performance and installation, she explores the stories of marginalised people, coastal communities, borders that separate and the histories intrinsic to the landscapes of today.
Past exhibitions/screenings include Tea and Sugarcane at FACT (Liverpool, 2024), Directory at The Wrong Biennale (Online, 2023-24), UNESCO International Day for Monuments and Sites at Aveiro City Museum (Portugal, 2022), CreART European Exhibition at Museum of Aveiro & Doge’s Palace, Genoa & Museum of the City of Skopje (Portugal, Italy and North Macedonia, 2020-2021), Toynbee Studios, Artsadmin (London, 2019).
