Film Project
Friends of Bradford Resource Centre are keen to celebrate the legacy of the Centre and the Chapel Street building - the idea of doing this in part through a film was developed by Adam Lewis Jacob (filmmaker) and Joel White (producer) who received funding from Bradford 25 to make it a reality. The film will be premiered in October 2025.
You Don't Know What You Don't Know, Do You?
by Adam Lewis Jacob
Filmed in Bradford through 2025, You Don’t Know What You Don’t Know, Do You? is a reflection on the history of Bradford Resource Centre (BRC), a key hub for community action in Bradford. Here, from 1979 onwards, a wide range of anti-racist, LGBTQ+, feminist, disability rights, and trade union movements could do the necessary labour that makes political struggle possible.
The film explores BRC’s legacy in the aftermath of a 2024 flood, which damaged the BRC space and archive. The film follows the people who organised around the task of sorting through vast swathes of material housed within the BRC building.
Still image from the film
By this point, many were returning to a space they had worked on in years gone by. Scouring through dark basements and dusty attics, we find people questioning what it means to try and record social movement history, and how this mirrors the problems facing BRC through its lifetime: how to define its work, whose voices are heard, how information is collected, when to fight on, and when to let go.
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Developed through Adam Lewis Jacob's ongoing interest in counterculture movements, archives, and radical history, the film splices together a rich variety of materials—VHS tapes, photographs, flyers, minutes, and music—animating the political questions and shifting aesthetic and technological visions of this vital history. The film connects this material to contemporary workshops (with producer Joel White and youth film collective Toothless Films) and archival projects, disrupting what it means to engage with the archive and how this might inform future political struggles.
The special premiere screening (17 Oct. 6-8pm) will see the film projected within the BRC space itself, alongside another chance to see material from the exhibition Resources for Democracy: A People’s History of Bradford Resource Centre.
Organised by Friends of Bradford Resource Centre, with support from Bradford 25, the Lipman-Miliband Trust and the British Art Network. Facilitated in partnership with People’s Property Portfolio, who are overseeing the next phase of BRC’s life.