TRAVELLING THE ROAD (2024) - A portrait of Brian Desmond Hurst [7:00]

Travelling the Road is the title taken from the unpublished biography of Belfast born film director Brian Desmond Hurst (1895-1986), this work-in-progress is a portrait: a compendium of clips from archive footage, the films of Brian Desmond Hurst and donated clips from contemporary Belfast. It explores through a queer lens the life and times of Belfast’s most prolific film director from their east Belfast roots working in Bloomfield linen mill, to serving at Gallipoli and somehow finding their way to Hollywood, firstly as an art director then eventually to director movies and with the world their experiences as an openly bisexual man, a solider during WW1, and a proud Irish man. 

Travelling the Road is inspired by the archive of Brian Desmond Hurst, now in the care of his descendants Allan and Caitlin Smith and interviews taken from members of the LGBTQ+ community in east Belfast as the project charts an evolving east Belfast landscape. Thanks to the family of Brian Desmond Hurst, Northern Ireland Screen Digital Film Archive, Ponyhawke collective, Household Belfast and all those who took the time to speak to me. 

[scenes]

  1. Bloomfield Linen Factory

  2. ‘Embroidered, omitted, altered’

  3. Daimler 

  4. Two naked marines 

  5. Gold Flake cigarette packet 

  6. Flute Players

  7. Travelling the Road

  8. “I had two fathers, my real one and the new one I imagined for myself”

  9. Wasteland 

  10. 1912 - the launch of the Titanic 

  11. Left in the gorse 

  12. God Like Australians

  13. Athens 

  14. The original temple on the Acropolis 

  15. Cerulean Blue + Chrome Yellow 

  16. ‘Big yellow Mercedes withered upholstery, very vulgar’

  17. 1932 - Marlene Dietrich - Shanghai Express

  18. BOY - Norman Dryden

  19. 1935 - Riders of the Sea [J.M. Synge]

  20. Uncredited producer Gracie Fields 

  21. Richard Addinsell -Warsaw Concerto 

  22. Anton Walbrook ‘sissy’

  23. 1942 - A Letter from Ulster 

  24. W.B. Yeats ‘Byzantium’

Travelling the Road (still ) - ‘scene 12 [God Like Australians] to scene 13 [Athens]’

top (still) ‘scene 2 [Embroidered, omitted, altered] to scene 3 [Daimler]’

TRAVELLING THE ROAD is part of Ideal Development Opportunity at PS2 gallery Belfast