The Useful Time Machine

When two unlabelled MiniDV tapes unexpectedly arrive in my life, I become consumed by a simple question: who do they belong to, and how can I return them? The footage reveals a family gathered together, generations sharing an ordinary moment captured on camera. But these tapes have been separated from the people and the history they hold.

My search leads me to a forgotten photographic archive, a daughter trying to preserve her father's legacy, and a family whose memories have been lost and found again. What begins as an investigation into someone else's past soon brings me face to face with the gaps in my own.

My father died when I was a child, leaving me with fragments of memories and questions I've spent years avoiding. As I follow the trail from England to Nigeria, I begin to investigate the history I've inherited, the stories that have survived, and the things my family has never spoken about.

Blending documentary filmmaking with animation, collage, archival footage and my own film noir detective persona, The Useful Time Machine is a visually inventive and deeply personal exploration of memory, grief, migration and belonging. Through this investigation, I'm asking how we make sense of ourselves when our histories are incomplete, and whether we can learn to live with the pieces we may never find.

A film about the past we try to hold on to, the stories we carry, and what we choose to pass on.