BEAUTIFUL THING (Hettie MacDonald, 1996); ESTATE (Fugitive Images, forthcoming); MYTHS OF SOCIAL CAPITALISM, PART 1 (Rastko Novakovic & Steven Ball, 2012); HEYGATE (Will Montgomery, 2010).
Frustrated with cliched and simplistic representations of council estates as “sink estates”? Come and join us on Tues 15th May at The Screen @ RADA in Bloomsbury for a collaborative night of films, art and conversation about ESTATES and the UK housing crisis.
Our feature film will be “Beautiful Thing” (1996), Hettie MacDonald and Jonathan Harvey’s tender ‘coming out’ story, set against the blue skies of a hot summer in the Thamesmead estate (also known from TV’s ‘Misfits’). The soundtrack features tunes from Mama Cass Elliot and The Mamas and the Papas. The film was widely acclaimed at the time of its release, winning awards at numerous festivals, including Paris Film Festival, São Paulo International Film Festival and GLAAD Media Awards. Author Jonathan Harvey will be present to introduce the film.
We’ll also be showing an extract from Fugitive Images film-in-the-making, Estate, a feature length documentary-fiction hybrid following the bulldozing of the Haggerston Estate, and the construction of replacement housing. Filmmakers Andrea Luka Zimmerman and Lasse Johansson will be present for Q&A. Rastko Novakovic and Steven Ball will present another film-in-progress, “Myths of Social Capitalism, Part 1″, recorded on London’s Heygate Estate, critiquing its imminent demolition.
Poetry and sonic expert Will Montgomery (RHUL) will introduce his sound archiving project, Heygate (2010), recorded in and around the Heygate.
This is the sixth screening of a season by Passengerfilms and UCL Urban Lab Films on urban architectures.
Followed by Q&A with the artists, filmmakers and author of Beautiful Thing, Jonathan Harvey. Chair Ben Campkin (UCL Urban Laboratory).
7pm, Tuesday the 15th May, The Screen @ Rada, Bloomsbury. Entry £4.
