Phil Collins

At first glance, Collins’s works are not overtly critical; rather, they function as associative narratives that, through different layers of storytelling, communicate the complexity of their subjects. His projects often emerge from long-term collaborations with communities and individuals, examining how ideology, popular culture, labour, desire, and collective memory shape lived realities. Balancing intimacy with social critique, Collins consistently challenges the conventions of documentary representation, creating works that are emotionally charged, formally adventurous, and attentive to the poetics of everyday life.

Throughout, Collins places careful emphasis on the relationship between personal perspectives and broader historical contexts, frequently focusing on places marked by political transition or histories of oppression. Music plays a central role within his practice, functioning not simply as a background, but as a social structure through which communities can speak, gather, and imagine alternative forms of coexistence.

The programme at Cukrarna Gallery unfolds through a three-week screening loop that repeats for the duration of the exhibition, allowing each work to occupy the gallery space for one week before the cycle begins again. Together, the selected films offer a broad insight into Collins’s distinctive artistic language and his sustained interest in the intersections between politics, media culture, and collective experience.

Ceremony (2018, 67 min.) follows the journey of a Soviet-era statue of Friedrich Engels from a village in Eastern Ukraine to Manchester, the city where Engels lived and worked for more than twenty years. Combining elements of the road movie, experimental television, and socialist mass events, the film reflects on the social realities of contemporary Britain while reconsidering communism as a visionary alternative to the political and emotional conditions shaped by global capitalism.

Mixtape #1 (2024, 117 min.) presents an unconventional overview of Collins’s extensive moving-image practice through a collage of excerpts, fragments, music videos, animations, and previously unseen material drawn from more than twenty years of work. Inspired by the intimate logic of the homemade compilation cassette, Mixtape #1 is a genre-hopping compendium that foregrounds resonances between images and emotions, and their historical conditions, revealing conceptual and formal continuities across the artist’s diverse oeuvre.

Created through a year-long collaboration with public institutions in Glasgow, Tomorrow Is Always Too Long (2014, 82 min.) is a love letter to the city crafted as a contemporary urban symphony. Interweaving archival footage, improvised television broadcasts, animation, and Cate Le Bon’s songs performed by everyday Glaswegians and the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, this expansive documentary musical evokes the tenderness, humour, and restless energy of local communities.