Deep Cuts On Super 8 and 16mm

The ‘substandard’ gauges of Super 8 and 16mm provide the delivery mode for two little-known works drawn from different worlds, yet both come laden with rich context.

  • Total running time 80min

There’s Only One United!

UK 1974. Director Wendy Smith. 20min. Super 8

The Late Show

UK 1969. Director Michael Wakely. 12min. 16mm

Start the day with not just one discovery, but two. There’s Only One United! and The Late Show share an interest in film’s capacity to illustrate personal agency in the wake of larger forces. Noted artist Smith, whose archive has been recently acquired by Tate, turns her Super 8 camera on her beloved Leeds United, documenting the team’s celebrated 1973-74 season from a devotee’s perspective. Smith’s unusual football fan film screens with a separate tape cassette soundtrack. Wakely’s film, an exquisitely crafted yet deeply ambiguous single ten-minute shot, sees a silent, unnamed Black man, played by Frank Okonta, practice his own form of personal resistance against aggressive mass media attack.

Milo Holmes, Film Conservator, and researcher at BFI National Archive, will be presenting his research on The Late Show and Wendy Smith and will be joined by Dr. Darragh O'Donoghue, archive curator at Tate Archive, for a conversation about There's Only One United!

William Fowler