Project Detail

If I Could Name You Myself (I Would Hold You Forever)

Synopsis

Cotton is a plant with connotations that far surpass its delicate white flowers, bringing to mind issues of enforced labour, of exploitation and of colonialism. Yet the very crop for which Creole women were forced into labour, offered a form of herbal resistance: cotton root bark could be used as birth control. Herbal knowledge carefully gathered and held, was used amongst the women to defy a lineage of servitude. Beneath the inherent violence of the slave economic system, we find quiet resistance and moments of deep, loving rebellion. IF I COULD NAME YOU MYSELF (I WOULD HOLD YOU FOREVER) is in memoriam of this legacy.
Artist Film Commission for HOME, Manchester, March 2021

Details

Year
2021
Type of project
Shorts
Running time
7 min 58 sec
Format
digital
Director
Hope Strickland
Producer
Jessica El Mal

Production Status

Production Company

rhstricklandspence@gmail.com

Page updates

This page was last updated on 12th May 2025. Please let us know if we need to make any amendments or request edit access by clicking below.

See also

You may also be interested in other relevant projects in the database.

I'll Be Back I'll Be Back

Director: Hope Strickland

Year: 2022

Existing at the convergence of history and myth, the Haitian maroon leader François Mackandal returns to disrupt the colonial logic of the archive.

A VR image. A cherry blossom tree in summer, where blossoms are gently falling in the breeze The Last Tree

Director: James Hosken, Katie Eggleston, Lauren Fitzpatrick, Mimi Harmer

Year: 2025

An interactive stationary VR experience that invites quiet reflection on nature, slowness, and change. It offers a moment to sit, observe, and influence the atmosphere in a peaceful, dreamlike virtual world. The experience places the audience on a hilltop, looking across at a lone tree gently swaying in the breeze on another hill. The audience can move their hands gently to influence the wind. The seasons cycle over the course of ten minutes, the visual and audio aesthetics shifting with the changes. The piece emerged from thinking about how nature changes quietly around us, often unnoticed. We invite the audience to consider how small gestures and moments connect us to the world’s larger cycles, and how ephemeral and fragile those cycles are.

The Recce The Recce

Director: Daniel Mann

Year: 2026

Drawing on a location test filmed in Uganda and an email exchange with the scout, this short film captures cinema’s ties to land and its entanglement with colonial imaginaries, binding the fiction of filmmaking with state-building. Official Selection Berlin International Film Festival 2026 - Forum Expanded - World premiere