Foreign Sleep (2019) is a revised iteration of the original Choreophobia performance by artist Lilian Nejatpour. The performance borrows its name from the theory of dancer and choreographer Anthony Shay, who examined the intervening occurrence of colonialism and Western thought on Middle Eastern dance practices. Shay articulates Western involvement in the Middle East as transforming gender and sensuality in non-Western male bodies, arguing that this interference influenced a phobia toward transgressive and fluid forms of gender display.

Paul Bush animation

Mock Duck Studios is an stop-motion animation studio, run by independent animator Astrid Goldsmith.
Based in Folkestone in Kent, Mock Duck Studios was set up by animation director Astrid Goldsmith in 2012, after a decade of industry experience as a model maker for film and TV. While making puppets and props for clients including Duracell; Ford Fiesta; Chivas Regal; Leeds Castle; Hammer & Tongs (Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy); and a weird commission for the boyband Blue, Astrid completed her debut short film Squirrel Island in 2016. Squirrel Island went on to compete at many top international film festivals (including Clermont-Ferrand, Tampere, LSFF, Aesthetica, and Warsaw Film Festival), and won several prizes for Best Film.

New Animation works…

A young girl spends the evening alone at home. She decides to have some sweet solo pleasure session, but not everything goes according to plan.

Secret Strangelove Encounter 9

Newcomers Welcome.

The location of the event will be revealed on your ticket. Book your ticket here.

There are multiple time slots for this encounter. Each last 30 minutes.

In this animated short, director Peter Foldès depicts one man’s descent into greed and gluttony. Rapidly dissolving and ever-evolving images create a contrast between abundance and want. One of the first films to use computer animation, this satire serves as a cautionary tale against self-indulgence in a world still plagued by hunger and poverty.

A selection of artists based in Kent

A screening of works

Secret Strangelove Encounter 7.

Amongst the seaside revellers one person seeks to head out beyond the edge of the land. come to hear their story; a tale, a journey, and an attempt to connect with something lost. 

The location of the event will be revealed on your ticket. Book your ticket here.

This 'encounter' can be viewed at anytime over the time slot (1-4pm Sunday 24th).  

Single Channel work

We are delighted to have Sister Seitan taking over the Quarterhouse Kitchen to bring delicious vegan food across the weekend of the Folkestone element of the festival. Timings: 12pm to 3pm

Strangelove Festival 2019 invited artists to submit 30 second films, responding to the festival's theme of duration - reflecting our fast-paced consumer culture of digital media. Thirty seconds is: how long most adverts last, how long most people look at an artwork in a gallery, 12 breathes and an 0.008th of an hour.

Melanie Manchot’s Dance (All Night, Paris) focuses on the act of dancing in public and examines a range of meanings embedded in dancing as a collective experience. Collective dancing, is intrinsic and indigenous to all civilisations, including our own western cultures.

Secret Strangelove Encounter 6

Time drags in an alien space.

The location of the event will be revealed on your ticket. Book your ticket here.

There are multiple time slots within this timeframe.

Timeslice is a pulsing three-dimensional light sculpture with infinite viewing angles. Rows of suspended translucent organza sheets create many projection surfaces, and flickering, organic waves of motion pass across them, giving light form and depth.

Queertopia curated for Daata Editions by Gemma Rolls-Bentley, features artists: Holly Blakey, Rindon Johnson, Zoe Marden, Rashaad Newsome, Hannah Quinlan & Rosie Hastings, Jacolby Satterwhite and Puck Verkade.’ The artists included in Queertopia straddle London and New York, two cities at a pivotal moment in their queer history.

This film is a sort of visual diary from March 2017 - March 2018, logging changing landscapes, people, weather, animals and collected conversations from Folkestone's bus passengers. Soundtracked by local musicians and friends.

The Slave's Lament, Graham Fagen, 2015

Single Screen version, Loop duration 14mins 33secs

 Originally produced for Scotland + Venice 2015, commissioned and curated by Hospitalfield, Arbroath.

Four artists working with performance seek to establish / carve out the foundations for a live space in which aspects of physicality in each working practice can be brought to the surface and deployed by each artist as they see fit; aiming to draw out similar notions and parallels that may have not coincided with each other before.

Bodyscapes is a collection of new films by Japanese artists whose use of the body is central to their work – either as a landscape, a political metaphor or method of expression – the body acts as a vehicle and subject to communicate ideas. This will be screened in The Quarterhouse Auditorium 4-6pm Saturday 23rd March and the curator, Jamie Wyld will be talking about the screening in the Quarterhouse Clearing at 4pm - 5pm.

Bodyscapes is a collection of new films by Japanese artists whose use of the body is central to their work – either as a landscape, a political metaphor or method of expression – the body acts as a vehicle and subject to communicate ideas. In Fuyuhiko Takata’s Little Mermaid inspired Cambrian Explosion, Takata’s character Princess Mermaid attempts to create his own legs by bloodily sawing his own tail in half. Aya Momose attempts to speak and converse with a goat, to share feelings of forgiveness and pain in her film, To Cuddle a Goat, a Poor Grammar Exercise. And in The Educational System of an Empire by Hikaru Fujii, the artist asks a group of young South Korean’s to reenact actions of historical colonial Japan upon the nation of Korea.

Exhibiting Artists: Niyaz Saghari, Vicky Smith, Katie Davis, Dani Landau, Laura Phillips, Melanie Clifford, Marcy Saude.

Curated by: Vicky Smith

Discussion and talks

Secret Strangelove Encounter 8

Female listening paper 1.

The location of the event will be revealed on your ticket.

There are two time slots for this event.

Exhibiting Artists: Niyaz Saghari, Vicky Smith, Katie Davis, Dani Landau, Laura Phillips, Melanie Clifford, Marcy Saude.

Curated by: Vicky Smith