Screening Room:
TEETH, Jennifer Martin (2019)

For our second Screening Room event we proudly present Jennifer Martin’s recent films TEETH and CHANNEL 6 (2019)
In TEETH an eager couple, Charlotte and Myles are interrogated by two Home Office agents about their spousal visa application. They endure a series of assessments that become progressively performative to attest to the legitimacy and acceptability of their relationship.
TEETH addresses the entanglement of love, power, and administration in the UK spousal visa process. In January 2017, former Home Secretary Amber Rudd wrote, ‘illegal and would-be illegal migrants and the public…need to know that our immigration system has “teeth”‘. Her letter, written to then Prime Minister Theresa May, was leaked in April 2018 amid reporting on the Windrush Scandal. Teeth are the bite of the UK immigration system, its violence and desirous devouring.
In TEETH the Home Office sites operate not only as interrogative spaces but theatrical spaces akin to the stage and the audition room. These sites function to produce and evaluate belonging, borders, and national identity through the framework of immigration and intimate bonds. The fictional interview in TEETH is not a carbon copy of the experience. The interview practices are primarily based in reality—the communication evidence being a requirement for spousal visa applications—but the staging strives to convey the emotional reality.
CHANNEL 6 (2019)
The segments of ‘Channel 6’ (2019) oscillate from places of power such as the media’s portrayal of the Royal Family to sites of resistance where bystanders by collective compassion and force challenge Immigration Enforcement. The final segment ‘Britain Been Rotten’ channels the mythology of the ‘tooth worm’; a fictitious parasite, which was imagined to be the cause of toothache. These segments constituted an installation presented at Turf Projects in December 2019.
Attendees will receive a private link to the watch the film at their leisure for 48 hours before the discussion and then we will be joined in person by Jennifer Martin at 6pm on Thursday 16 July to discuss the film with Benjamin Cook, LUX Director and audience members.
This screening/event is FREE but if you are able please consider making a donation to this cause nominated by Jennifer.
Donation:
Akwaaba, a Hackney-based volunteer-run social centre for migrants