Hackney will receive a boost to its green credentials early next month when it holds the opening and closing galas of the UK Green Film Festival.
Venues across the country are to screen independent documentary films from around the world that explore a range of environmental issues.
The opening night at Hackney Picturehouse on 1 June sees the UK premiere of The Last Catch, by German director Marcus CM Schmidt. The film looks at the how bluefin tuna are being fished to extinction and the increasingly ruthless fight among fishermen for the last of a valuable resource.
There will also be a screening of Musicwood, a documentary about a group of guitar-makers who attempt to stop Native American loggers from destroying a primeval forest, while the festival closes with a screening of Expedition to the End of the World, which follows the adventures of a group of scientists, artists and philosophers as they sail to the rapidly melting massifs of North-East Greenland.
In all, seven feature length documentaries will be presented at the festival, all of which will be preceded by an accompanying short film. Each film will be competing for the Palme Verte Award, as well as the UKGFF Audience Award.
Blackfish, one of the films shown at last year’s East End Film Festival
The East End Film Festival has launched its first ever crowdfunding project, which aims to raise at least £25,000 by Sunday 11 May.
In the few years since its inception in 2001, The East End Film Festival has become one of the UK’s largest international film festivals, with its annual programmes notable for their ecclecticism and breadth.
This year’s festival in June will be a special one, as the once council-backed event is now an independent Community Interest Company. This is a type of social enterprise whose profits and assets are used only to achieve its social objectives.
Appealing to members of the public for pledges, festival organiser Alison Poltock said: “With your support, we aim to produce free community activities, free public events, and bring more filmmakers than ever before to show their work at the festival.
“In the spirit of the festival’s history of openness, we want you to play an active role in shaping this future by supporting this campaign, and getting a say in the life of EEFF. We cannot continue our work in these areas without your help.”
Incentives for those making pledges include ‘Wall Of Fame’ listings, badges, model-making kits of the festival mascot ‘Eddie The Eel’ and VIP opening night tickets with red-carpet access and five-star hotel accommodation.
There are also opportunities to sit in on the festival’s jury dinner, a behind-closed-doors debate to determine which films win which awards, or to go on a tailor-made industry insight day.
Open The Gate is proudly hosting their unique alternative fair, The African Market
Zimbabwean superstar Anna Mudeka will be performing live, alongside DJ Koichi Sakai playing a authentic African, Funk, Latin and Afrobeat music.
One Drum’s drumming circle performance and workshop will teach you how to drum and dance in true Ghana style. For a taste of the latest African trends, visit the two exclusive catwalks that will be showcasing the leading fashion, homeware designs, jewellery & accessories and kids fashion by the talented designers of the African Market.
The catwalks will also feature looks by award-winning body artist Christelle Kedi, hair styling by Joy Phido (World of Braiding), makeup by Bibish Mbemba (Lady B.) and a head wrapping demonstration by Sista E. of the Calabash Hub.
Plus, explore your creative flair with a number of workshops taking place throughout the day – try making your very own African-inspired mosaic with artist Dionne Ible, immerse yourself in a storytelling workshop with performer Cowfoot Prince Usifu Jalloh, or take part in a face painting and glitter tattoo workshop with the talented artist Kemi.
For full details on activities taking place at The African Market click here or to explore the latest programme of exciting events at Old Spitalfields Market click here.
Clarinettist and composer Arun Ghosh. Photograph: Naomi Goggin
Spitalfields Music Summer Festival once again brings superb early music, new sonic explorations, innovative music-theatre pieces, family music-making and more to East London’s most interesting spaces including Christ Church Spitalfields, Shoreditch Church and Wilton’s Music Hall.
The programme is led by Associate Artists the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment and clarinettist and composer Arun Ghosh, who respond to the architecture and history of the local area, including the world premiere of Ghosh’s Spitalfields Suite.
Complementing them are the brightest and best in early music; a series of collaborations between music, theatre and film, and 15 world premieres.
Spitalfields Music also celebrates 25 years of its Learning & Participation programme, one of the first of its kind, with a number of events, including the London premiere of David Lang’s Crowd Out, written for 1000 untrained voices.
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Spitalfields Music Summer Festival
Booking information
Phone: 020 7377 1362 On the door: 30 minutes in advance of the event start time (subject to availability)
Tickets start from £5 with many events free
Full details at Spitalfields Music
Tower Hamlets residents wanting to make a first foray into the festival may be eligible for free tickets via Spitalfields Music’s ‘No Strings Attached’ ticket scheme.
The scheme allocates tickets ‘gifted’ through donations from Spitalfields Music ticket bookers to members of the local community who might not otherwise be able to attend.
More information via nostringsattached@spitalfieldsmusic.org.uk or on 020 7377 1362
Young players on_Ebor Street. Photograph: James Berry
Georgiy Guryanov, Evgeniy Kozlov and Timur Novikov in Evgeniy Kozlov’s flat, Galaxy Gallery, 1987
Calvert 22 Gallery presents the first UK exhibition of two Russian underground movements started by the visionary artist Timur Novikov.
In the early 1980s, during the last decade of the Soviet regime, the New Artists Group was founded and began making their wild paintings influenced by German Expressionism, Pop Art and Primitivism. First operating out of a communal flat and then an old apartment, they held a series of influential exhibitions, gigs, screenings and parties.
Club of Friends showcases the work and life of an extraordinary generation of figures whose experiments in art, collective creative practice and sexual representation remain groundbreaking to this day.
Works on display include textiles, film, paintings, graphics, costumes and music from extraordinary video works such as Ventslova’s highly kitsch Mireille (1995) to Timur Novikov’s flag-like fabric pieces.
Coming to the UK for the first time, this exhibition maps the untold story of Russia in the 1980s and 1990s, showcasing two important movements that changed the face of contemporary art in Russia today.
The exhibition is organised in collaboration with the Moscow Museum of Modern Art.
Club of Friends is at Calvert 22, 22 Calvert Avenue, E2 7JP until 25 May.
In the man’s own words: “If your photos aren’t good enough, you’re not getting close enough.” The collection at the Daniel Blau gallery, ‘Europe 1943-1945’, shows Robert Capa’s work got as close to the front lines as any photojournalist since, and closer still to the people who fought and lived through the Second World War.
Showcasing some 58 vintage prints, the exhibition begins from the shores of Sicily, as the Hungarian photographer accompanied the Allied push through southern Italy as far as Naples. Then, leaving one front for another, Capa accompanied the second wave of American troops to hit Omaha beach, Normandy on D-Day in 1944. The final leg of this journey winding through war-torn France, documenting scenes of re-emergence and retribution.
Untarnished since their original development 71 years ago, the images capture not just the terrible cost and circumstance of war. They capture living moments, stills of everyday life, of liberation and joy, drama and death; pictures of lovers and families accompany pictures of action and destruction in this collection. The power and timelessness of Capa’s life work, within all of this, was his ability to frame and project the relationship between the subjects of his photographs with one another and with the viewer.
His sense of scene and moment has produced world renowned photojournalism, several of his best
known pieces on display at the Daniel Blau Gallery. The black and white collection, some of which have newly been recognised as Capa’s, range in price from £1,300 to £8000. Whether you plan to take a part of the man’s work home or not, experiencing the legendary social documentarian’s work for free, much of it on display for the first time, is a rare chance that shouldn’t be missed.
Capa Europe 1943 – 1945 Until 10 May Daniel Blau Gallery, 51 Hoxton Square, EC2A 3AY
Flyer for Baby/Lon, now showing at Hackney Downs Studios
Hackney Downs Studios announces a season of new drama. A triptych of hard-hitting, daring and evocative theatre.
Season One presents theatrical work on an epic scale
The season promises three promenade productions of exceptional quality and provocative content, each exploring the vulnerability of the human condition. The season takes its audience on a journey, a life-cycle of pregnancy, birth, displacement and death, concluding with a tale of astonishing rebirth and renewal.
Hackney Downs Studios is working with The Big House (theatre company in residence), Renato Rocha for LIFT festival and Living Structures, all innovative theatre companies who believe that theatre and art can transform lives.
BABY/LON
Apr 14th – May 3rd Written by Andy Day Directed By Maggie Norris
Press Night and Season One Launch Thurs 17 April, for tickets email lou@creativenetworkpartners.com
Dear Daughter, If you never meet me…I want you to know that my first thoughts of you were full of hope. As you grew inside me, I knew nothing about you, and I was still so deeply in love with you that I could hardly think.
Inspired by the real-life stories and experiences of a care-leaving cast, The Big House return with their second show exploring the harsh realities of having a child taken into care.
Directed By Renato Rocha
Press Night Wed 11th June, for tickets email lou@creativenetworkpartners.com
Inspired by the ‘beautiful game’, Rocha and an international team of young artists use spoken word, sharp choreography and stunning visuals to explore experiences of homelessness in London and across the world in a production that will make you see your home, family and friends in surprising new ways.
Created in partnership with Street Child World Cup and part of the 20th LIFT festival.
Jul 5th – 26th
An homage to Herman Melville’s Moby Dick Created by Living Structures
Press Night Wed 16th July, for tickets email lou@creativenetworkpartners.com
A stunning reimagining of Captain Ahab’s relentless pursuit of the great white whale, Leviathan is imbued with the monochrome colours, geometric shapes and functionality of Russian Constructivism. Pioneers of immersive theatre – Living Structures – take its audience through an adventurous journey of stunning landscapes, choruses of singers, giant objects, sailor aerialists and hauntingly beautiful songs that fill you with wonder and break your heart.
Doris the heckler at Speakers’ Corner 1968. Photograph: Chris Kennett
Do you believe in the freedom to speak your mind in front of other people? Sounds From The Park (SFTP), currently at the Bishopsgate Institute, focuses on one small part of London where the principle of freedom of speech is held as sacrosanct: Speaker’s Corner in Hyde Park, a haven for left-wingers, right-wingers, Communists, weirdos, eccentrics, trade unionists, radical thinkers, religious fundamentalists, and all manner of in-between.
More than just an exhibition, SFTP mixes photos and field recordings together to weave a beguiling and inspiring feel capturing those gathered at the podium. A number of black-and-white photos show a range of characters heckling the gathered crowds, from the 1970s right up to the present; one shows an intense debate between a Palestinian and a Jewish man. Meanwhile, an accompanying audio guide contains twenty-nine interviews with speakers, who recount their interest in taking the podiums, along with actual samples of the speakers in action.
SFTP is culmination of a 14-month project commissioned by On The Record, a not-for-profit co-operative devoted to audio and historical samples of London life. Initiated by two oral historians, Rosa Vilbr and Laura Mitchinson, On The Record have uncovered a mountain of audio gems which paint a picture of London’s vibrant history just as compelling as photography and film on their own can do. Working with skilled volunteers, they have trained members of the public in oral history and techniques such as digital storytelling.
“We aim to create participatory projects that involve more people in uncovering previously overlooked aspects of heritage”, Vilbr says. “SFTP was our first major project and has been our greatest achievement – recording and sharing an important part of London’s social history and exploring a fascinating site of political, religious and eccentric discussion and performance. Because we are an oral history organisation, we were fascinated by collecting oral histories of what is essentially a diminished tradition – outdoor public oratory and debate”.
The choice of Bishopsgate Institute as the venue to house SFTP was no accident: “We worked with Bishopsgate because it is dedicated to the history of free speech, labour movements, and progressive movement”, proclaims Vilbr. “The idea was to show the many meanings Speaker’s Corner has held for many diverse people over time. Another key theme is the dialogue and interaction that has historically taken place there – it’s not all about speakers shouting at people. Hecklers answer back, disrupt and question”.
Meanwhile, Vilbr has been involved with projects in Hackney as part of a background in community development: she was involved with a project called the Hackney Housing History Project, which explored oral histories of the borough.
“One of our directors lives in Hackney and we work here whenever we can”, she enthuses. Recalling last year, she remembers: “We ran digital storytelling workshops in May 2013 for adult learners from Hackney that were very popular”.
In addition, they are currently developing a project later this year researching the history of Centerprise, once one of Hackney’s principal community centres. They are also working with Campaign Against Arms Trade on a separate project called Selling to Both Sides, in which the arms trade during the First World War will be documented, along with the accompanying resistance to it. Both should be essential viewing – and listening too.
Sounds from the Park is at the Bishopsgate Institute, 230 Bishopsgate, EC2M 4QH until 30 April.
John Michael McDonagh’s Calvary is at once raging and solemn. It rushes back and forth between the two states to dizzying effect, washing through its 101 minutes like the crashing waves of Ireland’s west coast sea, on which the film’s central, and sinful, parish rests. It’s a darkly comic musing on the fragmentation of an uprooted society and its most famous – or infamous – institution, the Catholic church. For all its splendour, though, there is something amiss, something distinctly Irish.
The film opens to a shadowy confession-box exchange between Brendan Gleeson’s Father James Lavelle and a troubled parishioner, who promises to kill the good priest in vengeance for the sexual abuse he suffered as a child. He gives Lavelle a week to put his things in order before a high noon-style showdown on the waterfront. “Killing a priest on a Sunday,” he says – “that’ll be a good one.”
The early scenes often slide into stunning overhead shots of County Sligo, evoking something of Ireland’s champion of religious critique, novelist John McGahern, who was born in the adjacent County Leitrim and would set many of his bruising portraits of rural-Catholic life in the wilds of the bordering Roscommon. It’s an evocation that I couldn’t shake off for the entire film, doing McDonagh something of a disservice.
A striking difference between the director and McGahern lies in the latter’s tender handling of a fading way of life. Despite the scathing nature of his work, the author would delicately lament the loss of elements of the farming communities of which he wrote. It’s not that McDonagh’s work is off the mark in turning its back on local identity, it’s that there is too little of McGahern’s fascinating Ireland left for my liking, beyond the rolling hills and tattered reputation of the ailing church.
This is perhaps the result of the 20-plus years that have passed since the author’s thumping Amongst Women was nominated for the Booker Prize, with the generational shift leaving too little of that past to justifiably cling on to. Not one of McDonagh’s characters appears to belong, and while this is intentional, and affective in its own right, the absence of history leaves a gaping hole – for me anyway. The film’s gorgeous sounds and images suffer from a kind of hollowness as a result. Even Lavelle is an outsider, drafted onto the land that was once every bit a part of its inhabitants – for better or worse. The majority of Calvary’s figures are displaced and at a loss; it’s a bankruptcy that is a harsh but honest reflection of the times.
This half criticism is based on a personal grievance and should take little away from the film’s considerable merit. Gleeson is sublime as the widower priest, who, to begin with, looks only mildly perturbed by the murderous threat hanging over his head. Recovering from alcohol addiction and offering counsel to his damaged visiting daughter – who, following her father’s departure for the priesthood, was left to deal with the loss of two parents in quick succession – the good shepherd continues to tend his wayward, eccentric and exasperating flock, knowing that one is the mysterious confessor set on spilling his blood.
With a tongue as sharp as cheese wire, chewing hungrily on the nourishing dialogue, but softened by deep, compassionate gestures, it’s hard to think of Gleeson in better form. His composure as he marches on towards his reckoning is mightily impressive. It’s reminiscent of his turn in McDonagh’s brother Martin’s comic gem, In Bruges; I half expected Colin Farrell or Ralph Fiennes to pop up at any moment as the would-be killer.
Overall, McDonagh has plumped for and executed something that is effective almost to a fault. While I can’t help wonder if it would work better on the stage, there is no denying that Calvary is an incisive, thrilling and original piece of work. Packed with an abundance of distinct and amusing characters, coupled with penetrating insight, it might just be the best McDonagh film, and that’s saying something. I’ll have to watch it again and see – with McGahern stashed away on the bottom shelf for good measure.
Calvary is showing at the Barbican Cinema, Beech Street, EC2Y 8AE until 24 April.
With his subtle use of classic neo-soul samples, a penchant for female vocalists and a varied musical upbringing, East London-based producer Mom Tudie (real name Tom Mudie) is an intriguing and versatile new talent.
At only 18 years old, Tudie’s musical tastes lean towards modern R’n’B, and a huge chunk of inspiration comes from greats such as Thom Yorke. “Recently I’ve got into Drake, James Blake, King Krule, and Katy B. I also like a lot of the stuff coming out of East London at the moment and one of my favourite releases is Southpaw’s Out of Oak EP,” he says, listing his influences.
With so many musical role models, it might be difficult to incorporate them all into a music he can call his own. Tudie, however, has one rule of thumb. He says: “I tend to tell people that my music is a mix of electronic ideas. I’d prefer people listen and make up their own mind.”
Past tracks have a garage-tinged edge, but Tudie’s latest offering, a song called ‘Human Heart’, is strikingly mature. In it he contrasts a sparse and melancholic synth with a glitch-hop driven beat. Added vocals by Bridget Spencer and some electronica infused lounge-jazz brass samples make it a serene but eminently danceable number.
Female vocalists such as Nicola Thoms and Abigail Glasser are prevalent in his music, although he assures that he is definitely not discriminating against the men of the musical world. “I am about to release a track with Tom Misch, who is a male vocalist, and a really talented guitarist and beat maker.”
While fellow musicians gear up for festivals, Tudie’s plans for the summer are surprisingly uncertain. “I am travelling until July, so I don´t know if I am going to have the funds to go to any festivals this year, which is a shame. If I could, I would definitely go to Brainchild Festival – it was amazing last year.”
