Screening of Bradford Forwards and Backwards (2024) followed by a Q&A

Bradford Forwards and Backwards is coming to the Schwarzman Centre on Thursday 29 October, with a screening of the film followed by a Q&A. It's presented by the Centre for the History of Science, Medicine and Technology, together with the Modern British History Seminar.

Bradford Forwards and Backwards is an immersive road movie that looks at post-industrial change in the north of England. Back in the early 1980s, when industrial unrest was sweeping across Britain, a state-funded oral history group set out to record life and work in Bradford, which was then the wool textile capital. The materials they left behind — photographic negatives, reel-to-reel tapes and a mass of archival papers — form the basis of the film, which plays out as a series of encounters with sensory fragments of social history.

The film was produced with the support of the Arts and Humanities Research Council, Towards a National Collection, the Science Museum Group, the Congruence Engine research project and Bradford Museums & Galleries. It features the work of the Bradford Heritage Recording Unit and the filmmaking of director Cal Murphy Barton and producer Paul Craddock.

The screening is at the Schwarzman Cinema on the ground floor of The Stephen A. Schwarzman Centre for the Humanities on Woodstock Road, OX2 6GG, right next to the café. It starts at 17:30 and runs for an hour and a half, including the Q&A. Entry is free, though you'll need to book your tickets through Eventbrite.