Michelle Williams Gamaker

Chapter and Cardiff University present Michelle Williams Gamaker: Double takes, a season of screenings and workshops celebrating the work of artist filmmaker Michelle Williams Gamaker.

15 November - 13 December 2026

Chapter
Market Road
Canton
Cardiff CF5 1QE
Wales

Double Takes - £5 per screening, or book all 4 and save £5 (via links below)

Programmed with Williams Gamaker, four classic early Hollywood or British films which feature racially marginalised actors: Merle Oberon, Anna May Wong and Sabu, are paired with her own films, exploring the inequalities of the early film industry. Recasting historical actors of colour as 'fictional activists', Williams Gamaker's films resist colonial storytelling in twentieth-century film, and restore the agency of these overlooked actors.

The season opens with Williams Gamaker's latest film Strange Evidence (2026), filmed and premiered at Matt's Gallery across 2025-2026. Strange Evidence is a genre bending Body Horror/Film Noir, focusing on 1930s British/Hollywood screen star Merle Oberon, who kept her mixed Sri Lankan, Indian and British heritage secret to protect her industry status. Strange Evidence will be screened alongside Temptation (1946), starring Oberon. 

Sun 15 Nov, 2.00pm - Temptation + Strange Evidence

Sun 22 Nov, 2.00pm - Piccadilly + The Bang Straws

Sun 29 Nov, 2.00pm - Wuthering Heights + Oberon

Sun 13 Dec, 2.00pm - The Thief of Bagdad + Thieves 

Incomplete Evidence - Free, booking required (via links below)

This season of events is concluded by Incomplete Evidence, a film festival and workshop series placing Williams Gamaker's work alongside a body of feminist, queer, and anti-racist films that subvert and reimagine film history, including those by Julie Dash, Ceclia Barriga and Sally Potter. In these films, cinema's incomplete evidence is both positive and negative. It's a sign of gendered, racial, and other inequalities, but it's also a site of possibility, opening onto a past that can be reinvented.

Michelle Williams Gamaker's complete Critical Affections Trilogy: The Bang Straws (17 mins, 2021); Thieves (27 mins, 2023); and Strange Evidence (30 mins, 2026), will be screened on Saturday 5 December at 5pm, introduced by her and followed by a conversation and audience Q&A hosted by Dr Alix Beeston, Reader in Literature and Visual Culture at Cardiff University.

Sat 5 Dec, 11.00am - Illusory Evidence (Film)

Sat 5 Dec, 12.15pm - Intimate Evidence (Film)

Sat 5 Dec, 2.00pm - Glittering Evidence (Film)

Sat 5 Dec, 5.00pm - Strange Evidence (Film)

Sun 6 Dec. 11.00am - Rescoring Film History (Workshop)

Sun 6 Dec, 1.00pm - The Critical Affection Zine (Workshop)