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Image credit: James Kirby

An immersive and interactive exhibition by Chahine Fellahi and Annis Joslin

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Produced by Corridor and videoclub, part of Days of Wonder.

 

​Hove Museum of Creativity

19 New Church Road, Hove, BN3 4AB

4 October 2025 – 12 April 2026

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Play Back Forward explores the film archive as a portal, a gateway through which we slip into the folds of cinematic time and space. No longer just a place of storage, the archive becomes a vessel of memory and imagination: a time machine inviting us to dream with our eyes open.

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At its heart, the exhibition celebrates the playful ingenuity of pioneering filmmakers George Albert Smith, Laura Bayley Smith, and James Williamson who were developing their craft in Brighton and Hove at the turn of the 20th century. Their groundbreaking innovations shaped film as a new artform, where the illusion of cinema was experienced as a kind of modern magic.

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Image credit: James Kirby

Play Back Forward brings their legacy into dialogue with contemporary practice, blending archive films, interactive displays, and new works by Chahine Fellahi and Annis Joslin, alongside creative responses by participants in The Wonder Club, a regular workshop for young people to make and learn about Brighton & Hove’s film heritage. 

Play Back Forward combines early cinematic tricks with contemporary experiments; analogue processes collide with digital play, and historic technologies inspire new cinematic possibilities.

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The exhibition unfolds in two parts: the first gallery revisits the pioneers’ innovations in motion, montage, and storytelling. The second gallery opens into Portals, an immersive video installation, in which visitors journey through a cinematic tunnel where past and present, memory and imagination intertwine.  

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Play Back Forward invites you to both watch and wonder. To see how the spirit of invention continues to endure through the timeless magic of light, shadow, and motion.​

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Image credit: James Kirby

PBF INSTALLATION VIEW - Annis Joslin and Chahine Fellahi - image credit James Kirby 838A88

About the artists

 

Chahine Fellahi is an artist, filmmaker, and facilitator based between London and Casablanca. Working across analog and digital processes, her practice explores the politics of archives, investigating the relationships and boundaries between the materiality of media and the making of memory. Her work has been shown nationally and internationally at San Francisco Arab Film Festival, Kaleidoskop Fragmente Festival Vienna, Yves Saint Laurent Museum Marrakech, and Warehouse 421 in Abu Dhabi. She has delivered participatory projects with the V&A, Arab British Centre, Cinematheque of Tangier and Mosaic Rooms. fellahichahine.com - @kimia.collective
 

Annis Joslin is an artist and filmmaker with a collaborative approach. Her work often emerges through dialogue and participatory encounters with others, exploring the interplay between personal and shared experience. Working across drawing, animation, photography, performance, collage and storytelling, she weaves these processes into moving image and lens-based works. Her work has been shown nationally and internationally including at the Fine Arts Film Festival, California and the New Digital Planetarium, Athens with commissions from the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Glyndebourne, People United, the Royal College of Physicians, the National Trust, Tate Exchange, the Women’s Library, and the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool. annisjoslin.com @annisjoslin

Image credit: James Kirby

Brighton & Hove Museums’ Film & Media Collection contains over 12,000 objects related to film and media practice from the 19th century to recent filmmaking history. It is the most significant collection in the UK after those of the British Film Institute and National Science & Media Museum. B&HM’s Film & Media Collection offers an opportunity to learn about, investigate and engage with film and filmmaking culture. 

 

Screen Archive South East is a public sector moving image archive serving the South East of England. The archive’s collections of magic lantern slides, films, video, and associated materials capture the many varied aspects of life, work and creativity from the early days of screen history to the present day and serve as a rich and invaluable historical resource.

 

videoclub is an artists’ moving image and digital culture agency, showing artists’ film and videowork across the UK and internationally. They support artists through curated programmes, engaging the public through screenings, exhibitions, talks, residencies and commissions. Working with small collectives to large institutions, we exhibit work in cinemas, festivals, museums, galleries, non-arts spaces and outdoors, presenting diverse work by early-career to established artists. @videoclub_uk videoclub.org.uk

 

Corridor is an arts organisation based in the South East connecting artists, people and places through lens-based participatory projects. Our artist-led programmes are exploratory and open-ended rooted from the outset in partnerships, creative engagement and learning in its broadest sense. corridorprojects.org.uk @corridorproj

Image Credit : James Kirby

Play Back Forward is part of Days of Wonder, a three-year project exploring the heritage of film and media in Brighton & Hove. Curated and produced by Corridor and videoclub in partnership with Brighton & Hove Museums and Screen Archive South East. With support from The National Lottery Heritage Fund, Arts Council England, and BFI/Film Hub South East. 

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Corridor is a company limited by guarantee without share capital. Corridor Projects Ltd. Company number 12791990

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