April’s film screening on Wednesday April 17th will feature four documentary shorts about London by new London film-makers.
Words by Martyna Glowacka
“After arriving in London you enter a kind of bubble with immigrants. You meet everyone apart from the English and you wonder if this bubble is all there is.
One day in October I was walking along Edgware Road, a busy arterial route crammed with people on the move, when I decided to turn right into quiet Bell Street and leave all the noise behind. That is how I came across Archive Bookstore.
Words by is a film presenting one day in the life of Tim and his Archive. My idea was to follow some readers among the bookshelves on their way to chosen pages and as they opened the book, I hoped to open them and look inside. “
Sweet Thames by Hatt Reiss
A meandering journey along the tidal length of London’s principal waterway.
Diverse characters are encountered along the way who evoke the flow of time through their reflections on ideas such as the symbolism of rivers, the passing of the seasons and the traditions of the Thames.
The film is a poetic and evocative portrait of the waterway and incorporates contemporary and historic writing inspired by the Thames.
Beautiful Flotsam by Nathaniel Walters
A film portrait of an exceptional community, hidden in a basin in London’s canal system. Narrow-boat life and community history is told through an atmospheric mix of images, aural recordings and poetry.
London 20/12 by Nick Charnley
An essay type film set in an around Vauxhall in South London. Narrated from the point of view of a fictional local resident, London 20/12 attempts to capture a sense of the ‘real’ London as it appears during the heady summer of 2012.
Patrick Keiller’s 1994 film London is used as a loose structuring device for the film and provides at the same time a convenient yardstick by which we might measure the city’s progress over the last two decades. With major redevelopment projects currently underway in Vauxhall and its environs, it is particularly pertinent to be focusing on this part of the city at this moment in time, to negotiate and preserve some space for reflection.
Films about London
Tate South Lambeth Library
Wednesday April 17th 6.45pm (doors open at 6.30pm).
Running time 70mins
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