Black history and modern-day architecture intertwine in a meditative new film about Manchester. Created by the British artist and filmmaker Jenn Nkiru, THE GREAT NORTH pays homage to the people and cultures that make up a city.

Taking Manchester’s industrial history as a starting point, THE GREAT NORTH moves through the city’s Black communities and spaces – from living rooms in Moss Side to social clubs and community centres in Hulme. THE GREAT NORTH is the story of Manchester told through its Black, Asian and Irish communities, spanning outwards to the North of England and the rest of the world.

Nkiru weaves together new footage and archival material from Manchester’s cultural and historical institutions – set to a soundtrack of the city’s underground music scene featuring Barry Adamson, A Guy Called Gerald as well as London-based Lord Tusk.

Grounded in the history of Black music, Afro-surrealism, experimental film and the Black arts movement, Nkiru has developed her own style of filmmaking, switching between eras and locations in a process she describes as “cosmic archaeology”.

Her distinctive style can be seen in the films REBIRTH IS NECESSARY and BLACK TO TECHNO, which explore blackness past, present and future and the history of techno music, as well as the music videos she’s directed. These include Neneh Cherry’s Kong, the Grammy Award-winning Brown Skin Girl for Beyoncé and,most recently, Kamasi Washington and George Clinton’s Get Lit.

This is the final commission in the Virtual Factory series, which invited artists to create online works inspired by the architecture and site of Factory International’s new space. Since 2019, we’ve developed four works in which the OMA-designed building was used as a starting point to be reimagined by different artists. These have included works by artists LaTurbo Avedon, Tai Shani and videogames designer Robert Yang.