PROTEST! Condensation Short Film Premiere

An evening celebrating Manchester’s history of queer protest, defiance and living memory.

This one-off gala event marks the culmination of PROTEST! – Documenting Dissent, IAP:MCR’s two-year National Lottery Heritage Fund-supported project exploring Manchester’s queer protest history and the long shadow of Section 28.

Using Manchester’s 1988 anti-Section 28 demonstration as the starting point, PROTEST! has gathered oral histories from LGBTQ+ activists, artists, teachers, organisers and people whose lives were shaped by censorship and silence. Across public events – including work at HOME, Factory International, the Royal Exchange Theatre and an exhibition curated by Jez Dolan at People’s History Museum – the project has explored queer memory as a living form of protest.  

At SCENE Festival 2025, On the Scene transformed Fairfield Social Club into a reconstructed 1988 post-demo party: part queer night out, part working film set. Audiences danced, acted and protested; that footage now lives inside Condensation: a new magic-realist short film written and directed by Joshua Val Martin, premiering at the very festival that helped to make it.  

Set in 2010 Manchester, Condensation follows a fresher wanting to attend the LGBT Society, but inherited silence and half-heard histories, born of Section 28, gather around him as a literal cloud. 

This evening will showcase the world premiere of Condensation, alongside wider celebrations of the PROTEST! project. This special event will be part gala premiere, part living archive, and above all a celebration of LGBTQ+ people who continue to resist through remembering.