Internationally recognised for the originality with which she explores photographic, videographic, and cinematic materials, Miranda Pennell has developed a body of work deeply connected to the critical analysis of the legacy of British colonialism and the role of images in shaping memory and History.

Winner of the Best Film Award in the Experimental Competition at Curtas Vila do Conde 2024 with Man Number 4, the artist now returns to the festival for an extensive retrospective of her work, accompanied by the exhibition H is for History N is for Now, presented at Solar – Cinematic Art Gallery. The programme also includes several screenings of her films, a carte blanche selection curated by the filmmaker herself, and a lecture-performance entitled Gestures of Love and Violence.

Miranda Pennell’s cinema stands out for the way it interrogates images of the past and the mechanisms of historical representation, seeking to reveal what remains hidden within the archives. In Man Number 4 (2024), the analysis of a disturbing photograph published on social media and taken in Gaza in December 2023 becomes a sharp reflection on the role of the spectator in relation to images of violence and conflict.

In other key works from her filmography, Pennell revisits forgotten episodes of British colonial history through cinematic devices that combine essay, research, and formal experimentation. In The Host (2016), she draws from hundreds of photographs to investigate BP’s presence in Iran, constructing a film in which the filmmaker directly engages with the materials and narratives she seeks to understand. Strange Object (2020), meanwhile, uses an album of aerial photographs to question contemporary ways of interpreting images produced within an imperialist context. In Why Colonel Bunny Was Killed (2010), using photographs from British India in the early twentieth century, Pennell searches for signs of resistance at the margins of colonial imagery.

With screenings at festivals and institutions such as the Berlinale, FID Marseille, Viennale, IDFA, Rotterdam IFF, and the Eye Filmmuseum, Miranda Pennell has built one of the most significant bodies of work in contemporary experimental cinema, marked by a constant re-evaluation of the political, historical, and emotional power of images.