Dub Maps: A Film by Howard Walmsley
International Anthony Burgess Foundation, Manchester
14th May 2026
Dedicated to Malcolm Whitehead, the former head of Ikon/FCL, the film making arm of Factory Records who passed away in 2019, Dub Maps features Cathy Brooks and Mark Hoyle from Dub Sex telling stories and searching for the ghosts beneath the new Hulme.
On paper, Dub Maps possibly shouldn’t work. Although a simple-ish premise, there is so much condensed into its 30-minute duration it could be overpowering. The fact it does work and doesn’t overcome can be credited to the expertise of the acclaimed film-maker Howard Walmsley, an early member of the Manchester Film and Video Workshop at the end of the ’70s and later Hacienda camera operator and music video director for Ikon. In many ways, Dub Maps, which uses IKON footage found only after Whiteheads passing, can rightly regarded as the last Factory/IKON film.
The film has many ingredients, all of which intersect and are juxtaposed throughout. At its core, it’s the story of Mark Hoyle and his search for his identity and the story of his band Dub Sex, but equally it’s a history lesson, looking at the area of Hulme, the past and present from today’s perspective with one eye on the future. Hulme will be known to many mainly for ‘The Crescents’, which are also central to this film, but the area is so much more. It’s an area demolished during the post-War era as part of the slum clearance policy, rebuilt in the 1960s and then demolished and rebuilt over the last decade of the 20th century, on each occasion much of what was there before being lost forever.
There are occasional visual interludes which include Mark Hoyle mapping the Hulme of the 1980s with boxes and marking the roads with a white brush roller. Although these sections are short, they did offer me a sense of nostalgia, and a wish that I could revisit the area as it was once more.
The recently-captured footage, including that of Mark and Cathy retracing their steps trying to remember where buildings or streets once stood, puts things into context which mixes effortlessly with the ‘low budget’ video recordings of 1980s Manchester; footage that still feels so familiar and to many will seem like yesterday. As mentioned, this is also the story of Dub Sex and. as well of the streets of Manchester, there is footage of the band in the studio and powerful live performances recorded at The Greyhound, Fulham and Manchester’s Boardwalk with several key tracks featured, including Caved In and Swerve.
Highly recommended for those with an interest in Manchester music and culture.
Dub Maps is scheduled to be shown again at the M15 on Screen evening on Friday 22nd May at Niamos along with a series of Hulme Shorts, featuring photographer Richard Davis, VJ Decoder, poet Lemn Sissay, and Mark Hoyle’s son, Syd Far-I, to name a few.
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All words by Iain Key. See his author profile here or find him via his LinkTree
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