Amaal Said
Open Country
Amaal Said
Commissioned for The Open Road by Film and Video Umbrella, Forma and Three Rivers.
Amaal Said's film Open Country follows a Somali mother and daughter who set out from their London home along the Old Kent Road, tracing the Pilgrims' Way into Bexley, North Kent, and beyond. The daughter plans to record an audio cassette diary for her grandmother, who is back home in Somalia and in ill health. Hoping to ease her mother’s worries and lift her spirits, she uses the journey as a way to bring joy and to help her focus on the road ahead. Inspired by a longing to connect with family abroad, the film explores the tension between being present in the here and now and yearning for another place. A number of sequences were filmed at the Red House, a National Trust property in Bexley originally built for the artist William Morris, in addition to locations in Canterbury and the Kent coast.
Open Country has been commissioned as part of The Open Road, a series of artists moving image works co-commissioned by a partnership of visual arts organisations; Film and Video Umbrella, The Amelia Scott, Cement Fields, FLAMIN, Forma, and Three Rivers.
Amaal Said, Open Country, 2025. Film still. Commissioned for The Open Road by Film and Video Umbrella, Forma and Three Rivers. Supported using public funding by Arts Council England. Courtesy of the artist.
Amaal Said, Open Country, 2025. Film still. Commissioned for The Open Road by Film and Video Umbrella, Forma and Three Rivers. Supported using public funding by Arts Council England. Courtesy of the artist.
Amaal Said, Open Country, 2025. Film still. Commissioned for The Open Road by Film and Video Umbrella, Forma and Three Rivers. Supported using public funding by Arts Council England. Courtesy of the artist.
Amaal Said, Open Country, 2025. Film still. Commissioned for The Open Road by Film and Video Umbrella, Forma and Three Rivers. Supported using public funding by Arts Council England. Courtesy of the artist.
Amaal Said, Open Country, 2025. Film still. Commissioned for The Open Road by Film and Video Umbrella, Forma and Three Rivers. Supported using public funding by Arts Council England. Courtesy of the artist.
Amaal Said is a London-based multidisciplinary artist whose work encompasses visual storytelling and community engagement. Born in Denmark to Somali parents, her photography has been featured in Vogue, The Guardian, and The New Yorker. She has exhibited internationally and received the Southwark Council’s I Create grant for her film Notes on Getting Home in 2022. As a Picture Researcher at Hyphen, she curates visuals to amplify Muslim narratives. Amaal holds an MA in Art & Politics from Goldsmiths and a BA in Politics from SOAS.
Film and Video Umbrella commissions, produces and curates artists’ moving-image works, and presents them in collaboration with galleries and cultural partners throughout the UK and internationally. We enable artists to make challenging and ambitious projects, promoting innovation through our support of new and significant voices working across the visual arts. FVU has supported more than 200 different artists’ projects, from multiscreen installations to online commissions.
fvu.co.uk | @filmvidumbrella
Three Rivers is a community arts organisation founded in a practice of creative care for people and places in Bexley. Our long-term projects bring artists and communities together to explore Bexley’s unique environments and peculiar places, from new towns to wetlands, and to engage with arts and culture by experiencing their surroundings in new and imaginative ways. We are supported by Arts Council England, through their Creative People and Places programme, which focuses on parts of the country where involvement in arts and culture is significantly below the national average. The London Borough of Bexley is one of those places and Three Rivers is the result.
threeriversbexley.org | @threeriversbexley