MAKING SPACE : Screening Programme
Friday 26th of July 2019
7.30 PM at Guest Projects
To conclude a one-month residency at Guest Projects, Soft Fiction Projects presented a screening programme with a selection of video and films expanding upon the research they have been undertaking during their time in Hackney.
The three short films present parallel histories and stories related to social housing provision and collective community resistance against government policies which entrench an individualistic social and economical system.
Screening Programme: 1 hour and 20 minutes
The Hackney Food Co-op,1973, (9 Minutes), television programme with reporter Bernard Falk, BFI Archives.
The Life and Hard Times of Susie p Winklepicker, 1986, (35 Minutes), Dir. Deborah Hall / Women and The Law Collective, Cinenova Collection.
Looking On, 2009, (33 Minutes), Dir. Sé Merry Doyle, Loopline Collection & IFI Archives.
Image credit: Still from Looking On, Dir. Sé Merry Doyle, 2009.
The Haggerston-based Hackney Food Co-op (1973) proposed a self organised alternative system to share resources while helping to create a sense of community for the most vulnerable citizens (women, mothers and single mothers, children and ethic minorities) abandoned by their own State.
The Life and Hard Times of Susie P Winklepicker (1986) by film director Deborah Hall (part of the Women and The Law Collective) is tragicomedy which explores the pitfalls of UK legal system and its means of control through forced economic dependency for women as a means to maintain hierarchies of gender, class and race. The film acts as a starting point of discussion on the Poor Law of the nineteenth century, as well as the recent Social Security Act (in 1986 still only a set of proposals), and with various aspects of work and marriage affected by the law. [text reference: “Time and Time Again: Cinenova and Women & the Law Collective”, curated by Cinenova and LUX, 2017]
The final short film presented is Looking On (2009) by Irish documentary director Sé Merry Doyle. The film follows a collective of community activists resisting the urban redevelopment of the north inner-city of Dublin in 1982. The gatekeepers of the community are introduced, resisting the might of the encroaching developers: families of street traders fight market closures; activist Mick Rafferty voices concern about Dublin Corporation; and Christy Flood, the last occupant of the Gardiner Street tenements, fights to retain his homestead. Locals look on as the tenements are demolished and the city transforms around them.
[text reference: IFI, Loopline Collection, Looking On]
Image 1-2: Screening at Guest Projects, London, 26th July 2019. This project is kindly funded by The Fenton Arts Trust.
