The Secret City is a 12-minute poetic documentary film exploring the Manchester neighbourhoods of St Michael’s Flags and Angel Meadow Park – a site where futuristic looking new developments rise above what was once a mass burial ground, and where the layers of the city press visibly against one another.

Originally conceived as a live audiovisual piece performed with live music and poetry, COVID restrictions transformed the work into a film. Using moving image, spoken word, and contemporary music composition by Simon Knighton, it investigates the relationship between new building developments and Manchester’s deep social history. The film unfolds in three movements — from the skyline downward, through the ground, and finally beneath it – asking what it means for a place to hold the living and the dead in the same space, and what history speaks on behalf of those it has buried.

High Rise draws a conversation between old and new buildings, asking whether they are united by time and the memories of what they have witnessed. The Ground attends to pavements, gravestones, and the objects and spaces that have been present to both new and old life – what Brehony calls reincarnated inanimacy. Underland descends further, to the people buried below the surface and the histories that remain, raising the question of what it means to have history speak on a person’s behalf.

Exhibited at Bankley Gallery and through Film Geographies