Join us for the London premiere of this ghostly Bahraini-British poem film, followed by a conversation with poet and filmmaker Ali Al-Jamri

When a visitor to a historic weaver’s house in Rossendale accidentally summons an irate Lancashire weaver’s ghost, his own ancestor, an Arab weaver from Bahrain, materialises to defend him. The ghosts spar over whose life is more difficult, whose struggles more important, and whose poetry was better. With its script written as one long poem, the film is a love letter to folk histories and dialect poetries across two cultures.

Working in film for the first time, Ali Al-Jamri’s The Legend of The Looms is both a poem and a film exploring shared revolutionary histories through handloom weaving. It is a narrative debate poem between two ghostly weavers: one from the North West of England, where weavers were critical in working class movements; the other from Bahrain, where weaving communities played vital roles in reform movements.

Filmed with the weavers of Al-Jamri’s own family in Bahrain, and in Rossendale Valley, at a historic weaver’s cottage in Rawtenstall, this poetic ghost story dances between place, fact and folklore, creating a new myth that explores how people of the diaspora can relate to an unlikely new landscape through the interconnectivity of oppressions, craft, and mortality.

The Legend of The Looms was commissioned as part of The Arab British Centre’s As We Are, Might Have Been and Could Be programme and was supported by Arts Council England. It was first exhibited in 2025 as part of a multi-media installation at Blackburn Museum and Gallery in partnership with the British Textiles Biennial. Since then it has screened at Liverpool Arab Arts Festival and The Race Relations Library in Manchester, among other festivals and venues.

Registration is £5 and includes refreshments.

If cost is a barrier to attending, please reach out to us on info@arabbritishcentre.org.uk.

Please note, the Arab British Centre is not a fully accessible building. Please reach out to us to discuss your access requirements.

Doors open from 6pm

Event start 6:30pm

Screening and Q&A until 7:30pm

Event Close 8pm