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REWIND FAST FORWARD is a unique archive of Liverpool’s music, club and fashion sub-cultures and the intersections with local LGBT and BAME history. It will be saved, shared and made accessible to thousands across the North West thanks to support from the Heritage Lottery Fund, Film Hub North West Central, part of the British Film Institute Film Audience Network and Liverpool Record Office.

Sandi Hughes, feminist film-maker, DJ and poet has hundreds of hours of film, thousands of photographs, nightclub flyers, posters, magazines and other printed material that capture the marginalised and outrageous characters of Liverpool that she mixed with during the 70s, 80s and 90s.

These rare historical recordings come from the decades before smartphones and the daily digital documenting that is now commonplace. Starting in the 70s with a stills camera and then transferring to a video camera in the 80s Sandi captured many community and political events concerned with gender, race and sexuality such as protests against Clause 28, AIDS activism and campaigning for an equal age of consent.

This is also a personal archive capturing Sandi’s own experiences of racism, homophobia and sexism through her childhood abandonment, divorce, custody battle and son’s death. Friends including Holly Johnson, Frank Clarke, Margi Clarke, Chris Bernard, Jayne Casey and Shaun Duggan appear in candid moments alongside many other less well-known characters from the buoyant Liverpool music, theatre, film and club scenes at a time of significant national political and social turmoil.