PENARTH-BASED artist Georgina Biggs will be sharing her immersive film based on a year’s residency on Flat Holm island at Penarth Pier’s own Snowcat cinema, with free screenings.

No Place Like (Flat) Holm was created by SheWolf, Ms Biggs' disability led company, and originally shown at Wales Millennium Centre in October as part of Llais (Festival of Voice).

The 25-minute film will be shown on the hour and half hour for free between 9.30am and 3pm on Saturday, April 15, and the following day, and then used as part of a schools programme about the island on Monday, April 17, organised in partnership with Cardiff Harbour Authority.

The story of the film is told through the body and voice of a lone woman in chronic pain, isolated on Flat Holm across a year’s residency there – observing the cycles of life and death on the island as the gulls which dominate the island come and go. The film is an intimate duet between broken body and damaged earth – the search for home/holm in Flat Holm’s brutal yet beautiful embrace.

Ms Biggs explained the screenings at Snowcat are a kind of homecoming for the project. Her relationship with Flat Holm began while walking on the beach in Penarth during the first covid lockdowns.

“I had not long moved to Wales from England when the pandemic hit," she said. "Living in a flat in Penarth, I was in unchartered territory. But I was lucky, instead of being stuck in the deepest darkest recesses of an industrialised West Midlands, I had now acquired a personal stretch beach for that time.

“I took myself to the shorelines of Penarth and, looking towards the great chasm of industry across the bay and towards Flat Holm on the horizon, I began working with the landscape.

"I was drawn to the island’s history as an isolation unit (cholera hospital) where sailors from around the world were dropped off to avoid bringing such an infectious disease into the busy port of Cardiff.

"The sailors were left to recover or die, stranded on a rocky outcrop within site of the Glamorgan shores which they would never reach, I wanted to explore the parallels between this and our contemporary experiences of isolation."

Living off-grid through all seasons on the island, Ms Biggs and the SheWolf team worked on Flat Holm throughout 2022, supported by Cardiff Harbour Authority who own and manage Flat Holm.

Working on the island meant working with the gulls, walking through their colonies and feeling the tension between their life on the island and their foraging flights to rubbish tips and landfill sites on the mainland, often returning with plastic and glass which they then cough up as pellets on the island’s rocky shoreline.

The film’s soundtrack has been co-composed by Ms Biggs with Welsh traditional musician Oliver Wilson-Dickson. No Place Like (Flat) Holm was supported through the Lottery by Arts Council Wales.