Vera Hems Anderson and Natailia Garay, founders of the Cheap Cuts Documentary Film Festival. Photograph: Cheap Cuts
Hackney director Asif Kapadia may have won an Oscar for his film about Amy Winehouse, but budding documentary makers from East London and beyond continue to have a difficult time making work and getting it shown.
Documentary can be an unnecessarily inaccessible medium, according to filmmakers Vera Hems Anderson and Natalia Garay, which is why they together founded Cheap Cuts Documentary Film Festival.
The volunteer-run festival, which takes place over the weekend of 2–3 April at Hundred Years Gallery, is for films under 30 minutes long made without a huge budget or the backing of a production company.
Filmmakers submitted their work for free (which is increasingly rare these days) with a total of 1,400 submissions received for the fledgling festival.
“Our aim is to make documentary accessible to people for all walks of life. We think too many film screenings and festivals have become exclusive events and this is both unfair and unproductive,” Anderson says.
“Film can be an extremely inaccessible medium and financially the film industry is one of the most unforgiving around. Film schools remain out of reach for most young people, obtaining the latest equipment is not cheap and even cinema trips are now a luxury outing.”
The open doors submissions policy meant Cheap Cuts received a diverse range of documentaries, some by unknown filmmakers from countries such as Syria, Mexico and Iran, as well as home grown practitioners from East London and elsewhere in the UK.
“We strongly believe in content over form and are interested in the stories filmmakers have to tell and not the equipment or budget used to do so,” Anderson adds.
In keeping with the festival ethos of inclusivity, screenings are free to attend, with the weekend itinerary also including workshops and at least one masterclass with a renowned documentary maker.
Cheap Cuts Documentary Film Festival 2-3 April Hundred Years Gallery, 13 Pearson Street, E2 8JD
Going Wilde: cast members of an operatic production of The Importance Of Being Earnest. Photograph: Royal Opera House / Stephen Cummiskey
Subversive wit? A satire of Victorian morality, with a distinctly homoerotic undertone? If you haven’t guessed it I might add the name ‘Bunbury’ or, better still, the immortal line: “A handbag?”
Yes, it’s The Importance of Being Earnest, Oscar Wilde’s genius farce, which this month comes to the Barbican in an operatic refashioning that promises to be inventive, exuberant and anarchic.
To recap for those who haven’t read the play since school, Jack and his friend Algernon are in love with Gwendolen and Cecily, but there is some confusion over which of the two young gentleman is called Earnest – a name both girls are very fond of, and something a romantic deal breaker. Meanwhile the fearsome Lady Bracknell, Gwendolen’s mother and aunt to Algernon, strongly disapproves.
This adaptation by Gerald Barry was first performed as a concert, winning a Royal Philharmonic Society Award, before being staged as modern-dress production by Ramin Gray for the Royal Opera House in 2013.
Now back for its second London season, cucumber sandwiches, smashed plates and megaphones are set to be the order of the day, all set to a hyperactive score that includes surreal variations of Beethoven and ‘Auld Lang Syne’.
The Importance of Being Earnest
29 March–3 April
Barbican, Silk Street, EC2Y 8DS barbican.org.uk
Hot proper-tea – the Stoke Newington Tea House. Photograph: Victoria Seabrook
The new Stoke Newington Tea House, as one might expect, does tea exceptionally well. The teahouse is a reincarnation of the Daniel Defoe, an old school boozer on Church Street, which got taken over by small pub chain the Yummy Pub Company. Now they’ve reopened it as a specialty tea place, with a menu of 100 loose-leaf teas that is difficult to choose from.
Thankfully, the staff are enthusiastic and knowledgeable about tea, guiding you skilfully through the menu: “Lapsang, Pu-erh, Oolong, stem only tea, flowering tea . . .”
Who knew tea was so exciting?
“. . . some have been buried, some have been put in a cave, some smell like sewage.” Fantastic…
The menu also explains the provenance of each tea and why it has been mixed the way it has, something we’d never encountered elsewhere. The house special is Earl Grey-based, with dried fruit peel. It’s tasty, lighter and less bitter than the usual supermarket stuff.
The Hong Shui Oolong, from Taiwan, is a fermented green tea, lighter and far less bitter. In fact it is more like a herbal tea, tasting of fruit and honey. “It’s a whole new world of flavour, like nothing you’ve ever tasted,” our friendly waiter assures us. I wouldn’t go that far, but it is lovely.
Prices at least won’t make you feel like you’ve been mugged, with most teas £2–3, although the more rare varieties push up towards £4.30.
And for the non-teetotal there is a selection of tea-based cocktails. The apple, elderflower and green tea mojito is refreshing and less sweet than its caffeine-free counterpart.
But the so-called Robinson Crusoe cocktail was less successful. Bombay Sapphire, honey, Earl Grey tea – all delicious. Together? It was like drinking gin and squash.
If you fancy a ‘proper brew’, the bar area offers a selection of craft ales and pub drinks. But it hasn’t the charm or atmosphere of a proper boozer – nor is it cosy enough to settle down for an afternoon of tea-drinking. And the food menu consists of only a limited selection of pub staples. Alas, our choices were either overcooked (chicken breast) or lukewarm (chips).
For a fancy cup of splosh look no further, but we felt the Tea House was trying too many different things to a less high standard, a risky strategy with so many other watering holes and cosy cafés to compete with on Church Street.
My partner and I recently found ourselves at a popular veggie café, sharing a pallid tofu scramble with squidgy fake sausages, discussing why so much vegetarian fare is inscrutably joyless. Whilst mainstream restaurants in East London’s exploding food scene make a point of showcasing the ever-changing palette of colour and tastes wrought by seasonal produce (but with meat), all too often vegetarian places serve pallid and underseasoned food. Yet there’s no dearth of vegetarian food on menus, which made me wonder if the outdated image of the vegetarian lifestyle was the culprit.
This might at least explain why the Hive, located at the top of Vyner Street, doesn’t mention its own vegetarian credentials too loudly. Instead, its website describes “a dining experience designed to enhance your lifestyle…our cold pressed juice detoxifies, our food nourishes, our coffee ignites the senses and our natural wines warm the soul.” If a bit vague, it at least sounds like a good overall outcome for anyone who has been to the pub too many times in the week.
The owners take their sourcing seriously. Mainly a breakfast and lunch destination, the Hive serves up coffee from the excellent roastery Square Mile, sourdough from e5 Bakehouse, all natural wines, and biodynamic and organic produce inspired by the Slow Food movement. The foods on offer are enticing and break out of the all too common staid fake meat and dahl framework found elsewhere. Breakfast here could be cashew ricotta cheese, made in-house, and marinated mushrooms on toast, and lunch courgette and squash noodles with coriander pesto. There is limited dairy on offer too.
When we sat down on a rainy midweek evening, we turned ourselves over to the chef for food recommendations. These presented themselves as tapas – first a wood board with carefully assembled amuse-bouches, such as a raw mini pizza made with macadamias, and a tempeh and aubergine square. Following that, a stack of grilled vegetables, served to us on a mini barbecue crafted out of a brick and smoking coals. I liked the playfulness of this gesture, full of spontaneity and creativity. For puddings, we were served an all vegan trio of caramel ‘cheese’ cake, lemon tart, and brownie, which were all good verging on great, possibly a bit chewy in the case of the brownie. Finally, there are many cocktails and natural wines on offer.
The Hive may rely a little heavily on soya products in its menu currently for my tastes, but it is certainly a place that I would return to, regardless of my diet. My only fear is that its location on the top of Vyner Street may not capture the right kind of passing foot traffic for it to retain a steady evening service. For the full experience, I would stop by for a daytime meal.
The dullest most dismal month of the year needs all the help it can get, and it comes to Hackney from all over the world as citrus fruits glow in piles and mounds in every greengrocer in the borough.
Bright shades of orange and yellow tinged sometimes with green, light up the gloomy pavements, and the aroma of peel and juice as children eat them on the street enhances the visual pleasures.
But there is so much more to oranges and lemons than just peeling them, eating the juicy segments within and throwing the peel away. Most citrus fruit have a whole range of sensory pleasures for us to explore – the fruity acidity of the juice, the bitter flavour of the pith and the intense perfume of the aromatic oils in the peel, as well as the scent of the blossoms, available here in Hackney’s Turkish food stores as ‘Blossom Water’, an alternative to rosewater. Even the inedible pips have a use, yielding pectin to make your marmalade set nicely. In the past, when citrus fruits were an expensive luxury, every aspect was cherished, and peels we throw away were used in various ways, especially candied.
The obsessive British marmalade ritual is a survivor of this, maybe it was worse in Yorkshire, but memories of hording sugar (rationing) and then the sticky tedium of boiling up the bitter Seville oranges, slicing the softened peel, saving the pips, keeping the juice on one side to add later, sterilising the jars, remembering to get the waxed paper to keep off the mould, then a greaseproof paper top, and securing this with rubber bands, and doing the labels, and wiping the floor and doorknobs, and the poor cat, and collapsing with exhaustion, remain with me after over half a century. And I still go on doing it. Perhaps the pleasure of having special labels designed for me on the Mac is incentive enough.
But the sour or bitter oranges we buy for marmalade have other uses: instead of lemon juice on fish or grilled meat, juice and grated peel in the gravy for a roast duck, or a marinade for fish or meat, instead of vinegar in salad dressing, or a sliver of peel to pep up your G & T instead of lime.
In 16th-century Rome the great cook Bartolomeo Scappi would dress a dish just before serving with a sprinkling of bitter orange juice, salt and sugar, and a little powdered cinnamon. The sugar balances the acidity, the salt and cinnamon bring out the flavour, and the juice cuts the richness. Try this with plain roast or fried chicken.
Another recipe from Scappi is a simple lemon relish: take a nice organic unwaxed lemon and cut it up very finely, getting rid of the pips but keeping peel, juice and pith, and season with salt and sugar, tasting as you go to get the sweet-sour balance right, and just before using add a splash of rosewater or orange blossom water; this is lovely with roast pork or baked or fried fish.
On a Thursday last month, the bleakest day of the winter yet, it was no fun at all in windswept Brick Lane, with mercifully few tourists, but far too many boutiques and cupcakes and lattes. It was a relief to totter out of the cold into the two huge Bangladeshi supermarkets, where human warmth and chatter, and the indefinable aromas of spices and provisions, cheered the spirit. At Taj Stores huge sacks of rice, as big as me, arrays of solid cooking pots, shelves of pulses and spices and pickles and kind people to explain things to the benighted old granny. The citrus fruits of Bangladesh are unique, and special to the cuisine. The large green knobbly zara-lebu or shatkora (citrus macroptera) has a fairly solid interior, with hardly any juice, but a fragrant rind, which when lightly scratched gives off a perfume that is so much more than lemony, with overtones of lilies, violets and roses, and can be used grated into a salad or soup, or the whole fruit can be cut into small dice and a few of them added to a stew or baked fish. The smaller yellow shashni-lebu has a perfumed sour juice with many uses. They help you understand why in spite of harsh conditions, low pay, and a tangled political background people from Bangladesh have throughout their long history in the UK clung to the ingredients and flavours of so far away. The Rahim chain of stores supplies many of these.
Pomelo Salad
This is a refreshing use of any citrus fruit, but works really well with pomelo, one of the earliest citrus fruits of all. You could use grapefruit instead.
1 pomelo, peeled, and with the membrane removed from the segments (tedious but worth it)
1 ripe avocado, peeled and sliced
1 handful of fresh raw soy bean shoots, well washed
200g cooked, shelled prawns (save the shells to make fish broth with)
spring onions, thinly sliced
for the dressing…
Vietnamese fish sauce
organic sugar (something with flavour as well as sweetness)
3 or 4 garlic cloves, finely chopped
1 cm slice of fresh ginger, shredded or crushed
1 fresh green bird’s eye chilli, finely sliced
2 spring onions finely sliced
Korean sesame oil
Mix all this lot together until nicely blended, tasting all the time to get the balance you are happy with.
for the garnish…
1 handful of basil leaves, coarsely chopped
some Chinese deep fried shallot
some Chinese deep fried garlic
Arrange everything in a shallow bowl and pour over the dressing, then ruin the arrangement by stirring gently until the things are coated, strew the garnish over, and serve.
Isabella d’Este, plump, acquisitive and forceful, turned a depressingly inconclusive military engagement by her husband Francesco Gonzaga, into a resounding victory by commissioning Andrea Mantegna in 1496 to paint Madonna della Vittoria, where hubby and assorted saints kneel before a Madonna and Child enthroned in a bower, with a huge glowing canopy of bright green leaves, white blossoms and yellow and orange fruit. Mantegna went on to use citrus fruit in the background of many paintings, the lemons and oranges and their white blossoms representing the purity and fecundity of the virgin mother. We also remember his day trip as a young man to Lake Garda on 24 September 1464 when he and his companions were entranced by the verdant meadows and fragrant lemon groves.
The growers of Lake Garda had a ready market not too far away in northern Europe, where the fragrant acidity of lemons was a luxury, and to Jews a necessity, for its role in Sukkot, the Feast of the Tabernacles, when the etrog, a special kind of citron, was used in harvest celebrations, using the fragrance of the nobbly skin and the potent shape to celebrate both the fecundity of the harvest and the fruitfulness of women in childbirth. Etrogim from as far away as Calabria are still prized by orthodox Jews, specially cultivated to meet rigorous standards of purity.
Mantegna went on using citrus fruits in his work, giving visual delight as well as symbolic weight. The Madonna della Vittoria was placed in a chapel in Mantua constructed on the site of the house of a Jew whose shameful persecution by the townsfolk was perhaps redeemed by the verdant bower reminiscent of the structures of the Sukkot ceremonies. And what are we to make of the angel holding a lemon in a meaningful posture in a painting in the National Gallery by Paolo Morando of the Virgin and Child with saints, which so closely resembles Jewish ritual [right]?
From Palestine to Bangladesh to the mounds of oranges in Stoke Newington Church Street we can shop and cook and feast all the senses on these wonderful fruit.
The Record Deck moored in its usual location. Photograph: Luke Guilford
The banks of the River Lea used to be a place where recovering vinyl junkies could feel safe from relapse, but that is no longer the case.
For taking a stroll down the canal towpath on any sunny weekend, you may well come across Luke Guilford and his floating record shop, The Record Deck.
The former librarian uses his barge as a de facto stock room, keeping everything from ‘the classics’ to jazz, blues and reggae – which can sometimes prove problematic for some.
“People like stumbling upon it, but some get a bit upset they found it because they were trying to not buy any records,” says Guilford.
“But I’ve found that record addicts will always find them wherever they are. I am one myself.”
Thumbing through the racks of reasonably priced records (usually priced between £5 and £10) stored underneath his bed and around his boat, he takes out a sample of his stock.
The Black Keys, Tom Waits and David Bowie sit neatly beside Django Reindhart, The Incredible String Band and an African jazz compilation.
Given the diverse nature of his clientele, trying to organise the front of the shop, which he hangs from the side of the boat, has become something of an art form.
“One day I decided to put a load of really trendy records out, then the first things I sold were The Shadows and Dire Straits. You can’t predict who is going to come along,” he says.
Guilford started the shop as an exit strategy from the rat race. With the pressures of his 9 to 5 job growing, he decided to put his life-long love of vinyl and his modest dwelling together to join the growing ranks of Hackney’s riverboat traders.
Currently moored alongside Springfield Park, The Record Deck can count a floating bookshop, a bar and even a hairdresser’s amongst its neighbours.
The Record Deck is based in Hackney on most weekends, but using the grass bank as his shop floor means opening hours are rather dependent on the weather.
However, Guildford keeps a box of records in the basement of Pages of Hackney on Lower Clapton Road for rainy days, and informs his Twitter followers of his location.
One of the advantages of the transient nature of the shop premises is that Guilford has become a regular feature at canal festivals around the country. This year he will be floating downstream to Field Day in Victoria Park and the Angel Canal festival in Islington.
Having lived on a barge for 16 years, Guilford’s love for life on the water has extinguished any desire to expand his enterprise or turn to the murky waters of online selling.
“A lot of people sell on the internet but to me that just sounds really boring,” he says. “But I don’t have any major plans for expansion apart from buying a load of nice records and passing them on to people.”
The Sheer Height company on-stage. Photograph: Thomas Scurr.
In a draughty pub somewhere south of the river I discuss gender inequality in theatre over a cup of tea with actors Jenny Wilford and Charlotte Couture.
The pair are the founders of Sheer Height, a feminist theatre company which this month is holding a one-day festival, Women Redressed, at the Arcola.
Showcasing new writing from UK playwrights, as well as excerpts from established plays, the festival aims presents theatre that plants female characters firmly centre stage, and which probes perceptions and expectations of gender.
Despite our shivering, the conversation was heated. A few years out of drama school, the actors are disillusioned with the roles they are consistently offered.
“It’s a saturated market, so it’s hard to get in the room to audition, for starters,” says Wilford. “But what always frustrates us are the parts we see coming up time and time again; we’re still seeing recurrent casting calls for the romantic interest, the mother, the sister – always family or romance or sex, in relation to a male lead.”
“In the 19th century, Henrik Ibsen wrote really strong, interesting female protagonists,” Couture offers. “And then at some point it kind of fell apart…” adds Wilford, wryly.
Couture and Wilford are brimming with facts about gender inequality in theatre. “Did you know 2008 was the first time the National Theatre staged a female playwright’s original work on the Olivier Stage? Or that The Mousetrap, by Agatha Christie – the longest running West End show – is frequently the only play written by a woman staged in the West End?”
Dissatisfied with the state of their industry, Couture and Wilford took matters into their own hands. In 2014 they set up Sheer Height, naming it after Shere Hite, a feminist known for her pioneering work on female sexuality.
Since forming, the company has staged a sell-out performance of Clare McIntyre’s Low Level Panic and November last year saw the inaugural Women Redressed festival at the Arcola. It was a sell out success, leading Couture and Wilford to bring it back for another outing this month.
The actors believe that, as women in drama, their work is inevitably politicised – though they believe it shouldn’t have to be. “It’s a difficult balance,” says Wilford. “Female playwrights and actors just want to work without labels or having to be political… but also – we want to make some progress here!”
“We have clear guidelines for script submissions,” says Wilford. “The idea is to have female characters at the core of the plot, which itself should explore gender issues and challenge perceptions.”
“We really think about what we’re presenting in terms of having a diverse programme,” says Couture. “Last time we had plays about abortion, domestic violence, sex work, the office environment, same-sex relationships… but we also put on plays about female friendship – and, you know, about women just having a good time! I think that in itself is really empowering.”
In light of cuts to the arts, Wilford and Couture believe now is a particularly troubling time for women in theatre. “Lack of funding means theatres are very reluctant to take risks. So, often, they’re going with safe options – which usually means commercial productions, established plays and the same revivals over and over again,” says Wilford.
Grayson Perry speaks at UEL. Photograph: University of East London
“It’s a marathon, not a sprint”, the Turner Prize-winning artist Grayson Perry told a flock of young artists in a speech at the University of East London last month.
The artist doled out valuable nuggets on how to conquer the art world, with patience, passion and a ‘plan B’ at the crux of it.
Rule number one is to love what you do. “You’re not going to make good art if you’re loading it up with expectations of income or praise or respect,” Perry began. Expectations will make your art a burden, and most importantly, “it must not become something that tortures you”.
Perry told the audience, mostly composed of fresh-faced students, about the importance of being “a bit raw”. Most of their art so far, he said, is likely to be unoriginal, for becoming a great artist takes time. “Stick with it,” he advised.
Succeeding in the art world will not happen all at once, so a ‘Plan B’ is always a sensible idea. Perry’s own backup plan, he revealed, was in advertising, yet fortunately he’s always been able to live off his art (along with a little help from his wife, the psychotherapist and author Philippa Perry).
Earning a living from art is a defining dilemma of many an artist, and Perry’s answer to this was to sell your work and not worry about the price. “Don’t overprice”, he insisted. At the start of your career, “the work is out there being an ambassador for you”, and you must do everything to get it out.
Like in any career “it doesn’t hurt to do a bit of networking”, Perry added, and recounted how manoeuvring himself into a seat next to Neil MacGregor at a dinner party planted the seed for an exhibition that took place at the British Museum a few years later.
Judging from Perry’s own road to fame, his advice is solid. Perry comes from a working class background and achieved widespread acclaim only in his late thirties. He said he saw himself in some of the UEL students. “I imagine a lot of the kids here, they don’t have conversations about art around the dinner table with their mum and dad. So you’ve got to be really driven, and I think that’s important.”
Perry admitted he is still learning a lot about himself and his art. His next television project will be about masculinity, and the process of making the programme he claims taught him a lot. “I might put on a dress sometimes,” he said, “but I am really quite a man.”
The inaugural Hackney WickEDart prize has been awarded to painter Mick Dean, whose large-scale oil paintings of the local environment are on display at Unit G gallery in Well Street this month.
The Hackney Wick-based artist beat off competition from 20 other local artists to win a solo exhibition at the newly-opened gallery.
“When you reach your 70th year there aren’t too many surprises left, but winning this prize was certainly one of them,” he said.
Dean describes his work as being about erosion and the second law of Thermo dynamics.
“I paint man made things that are slowly eroding and breaking down,” states Dean on his website.
Copyright Mick Dean
Dean has been painting scenes of East London for the last 15 years but only recently discovered that both sides of his family are from Stepney.
“I’ve traced them back to 1842,” he said. “I’ve always been drawn to the area especially the riverside from Wapping to Limehouse.”
During Hackney WickED’s open studio weekend last year, Dean’s work was singled out as a contender for the new prize.
Judges praised the artist’s “appealing use of colour and composition, revealing the essence of otherwise typical local streets and waterway landscapes”.
Copyright Mick Dean
The directors of Hackney WickED said: “We’re overjoyed to be creating real opportunities for artists based in Hackney Wick, introducing artists to galleries and curators, which enable them to raise their profile, put together shows of their work outside the area in well-positioned galleries such at Unit G.
“Hopefully it will lead to increased exposure and ultimately sales of their art. We’re looking forward to creating more opportunities like this going into the future.”
Street Entropy by Mick Dean is at Unit G gallery, 12a Collent Street, E9 6SG until 31 March.
Steve Davis and Kavus Torabi. Photograph: Cafe Oto
In his 1980s heyday he was practically unbeatable, but now snooker legend Steve Davis is cueing up in a very different way.
The six-time world champion has swapped the snooker table for the turntable, and on 6 May will be in Dalston to DJ at Café Oto alongside psychedelic musician Kavus Torabi.
Although the most successful player of his day, Davis was given the nickname ‘Interesting’ for his playing style, which makes his foray into DJing all the more surprising.
The 59-year-old lives in Brentwood, Essex, where he presents a weekly radio show alongside Torabi on PhoenixFM.
“They all think I’m fucking mad,” said Davis, talking about his love of Frank Zappa to the Guardian.
Davis is known to be a fan of the French collective Magma, whom he brought to London for a series of shows in the late 1980s.
His tastes range from 1970s prog, Canterbury and Zeuhl to modern day Rock in Opposition, Avant-Progressive and even left-field electronica and Intelligent Dance Music.
This month Davis is to join the likes of Thom Yorke and Four Tet on the bill of Bloc festival in Minehead, with his DJ name rumoured to be either DJ Thundermuscle or Rocky Flame.
