Catalogue > At random

A filmmaker turns forensic detective as she pieces together hundreds of photographs in search of what she believes to be a buried history, only to find herself inside the story she is researching. The Host investigates the activities of British Petroleum (BP) in Iran; a tale of power, imperial hubris and catastrophe. While the tectonic plates of geopolitical conspiracy shift in the background, the film asks us to look, and look again, at images produced by the oil company and personal photos taken by its British staff in Iran– including the filmmaker’s parents– not for what they show, but for what they betray. The Host is about the stories we tell about ourselves and others, the facts and fictions we live by - and their consequences.

Miranda Pennell originally trained in contemporary dance and later studied visual anthropology.Her short film and video works that explore performance and choreographies of the everyday, have been screened internationally including for broadcast. Her most recent moving-image work reworks colonial archives as the starting point for investigations into the colonial imaginary. Her film Why Colonel Bunny Was Killed (2010) was awarded best international film at the Images Festival, Toronto, and Courtisane Festival of Media Art, Ghent and is published on DVD by Filmarmalade. The Host (2015) is Pennell’s first feature length film. Selected screenings and exhibition of Pennell’s work includes mixed programs and group shows at Tate Britain (2014), Whitechapel Gallery (2015), Museum of Modern Art Vienna (2012), Kunsthaus Zurich (2015).