East End Review

Tag: Mile End

  • East End Film Festival gets underway this week

    East End Film Festival gets underway this week

    Running scared: Alex Humes is Paul in Mile End
    Running scared: Alex Humes is Paul in Mile End

    A thriller on bicycles, other worldly visitations and the iconic Two Puddings pub are in the offing at the East End Film Festival, which gets underway this week.

    The 11-day festival starts on 23 June – the day of the EU referendum. But whatever the outcome of that, the festival atmosphere is set to be one of celebration.

    Alongside some of the best independent British films there is a focus on Turkish cinema, as well as a day dedicated to films and debate on the refugee crisis. There are also several new films either inspired by or set in East London.

    Cycling thiller: Alleycats. Photograph: Christina Solomons
    Cycling thiller: Alleycats. Photograph: Christina Solomons

    Alleycats

    London filmmaker Ian Bonhote’s debut feature Alleycats premieres at the festival’s opening gala on Thursday. Featuring a flock of British talent, it is a high-energy thriller that romps through the streets of East London on the seat of a bicycle. When bike courier Chris witnesses what looks like a murder, his first instinct is to flee. But as his curiosity draws him back in, he is soon embroiled in a world of corruption, political power and and illegal bike racing.

    7pm, 23 June, Genesis

    Crisis point: scene from Mile End. Photograph: Jon-Paul Washington
    Crisis point: scene from Mile End. Photograph: Jon-Paul Washington

    Mile End

    Mile End is the debut feature from local director Graham Higgins, which recently won Best Feature at the New York City Independent Film Festival. Set against the backdrop of Canary Wharf during the financial crisis, it centres on two unemployed runners who meet by chance. Paul has just left his job and is experiencing trouble at home, so welcomes the experience and guidance of John. But his new friend’s ubiquitous presence soon becomes unnerving.

    9pm, 28 June, Genesis

    Existential: Native
    Existential: Native

    Native

    Science fiction is not usually a genre associated with East London, but Native, a slick looking feature starring Rupert Graves, may change that. When a signal is received from the other side of the universe, Cane and Eva are sent out to colonise a distant world. Shot predominantly in East London, this feature by Daniel Fitzsimmons raises questions about what it is to be human and whether masters should be obeyed.

    7pm, 1 July, Genesis

    Seeking justice: Marcus and Kurtis seek justice for Mark Duggan in The Hard Stop
    Seeking justice: Marcus and Kurtis seek justice for Mark Duggan in The Hard Stop

    The Hard Stop

    The riots sparked by the shooting of Mark Duggan in 2011 were unlike anything seen in the UK since the early 1980s. But the true circumstances of Duggan’s death remained mysterious. This documentary, directed by George Amponsah, follows friends of Mark Duggan as they seek justice for him, exploding historical tensions between law enforcement and London’s black community in the process.

    7pm, 30 June, Genesis

    Iconic pub: Tales from the Two Puddings
    Iconic pub: Tales from the Two Puddings

    Tales from the Two Puddings

    This documentary by Rob West focuses on the Two Puddings pub on Stratford Broadway. The iconic venue was a cultural touchstone for 1960s East London, so notorious that it was nicknamed The Butcher’s Shop. But it was also known for its great live music and dancing. The pub served as inspiration for the Long Good Friday, and has links to an eclectic cast of characters including David Essex, Harry Redknapp and Matt Johnson of band TheThe.

    6pm, 25 June, Stratford Picturehouse

    Disturbing tale: Gates of Vanity
    Disturbing tale: Gates of Vanity

    The Gates of Vanity

    This Hackney-based horror thriller by Suj Ahmed is about a man fighting to reclaim his life after a disturbing turn of events. Ben is newly unemployed and feeling lonely when his family go away. So he takes in a homeless man whilst he renovates his house. But a simple disagreement triggers a psychotic reaction in his house guest. Ben is held captive and physically abused. He must discover if he can fight back and reclaim his life.

    3pm, 3 July, Genesis Cinema

    East End Film Festival
    23 June – 3 July

  • Slave’s Lament – an art film with “raw immediacy” from Mile End auteur

    Slave’s Lament – an art film with “raw immediacy” from Mile End auteur

    Slave's Lament runs until 26 June.
    Slave’s Lament runs until 26 June

    There’s something ghostly about the intimacy of the art film Slave’s Lament and the accompanying series of Indian Inks by Graham Fagen, a Glaswegian artist represented by Mile End’s Matt’s Gallery.

    Notions of cultural redemption, closeness and personal detail take centre stage as Fagen looks at Scotland’s links to the slave trade and colonialism, particularly Jamaica.

    The four channel film is a performance of the song ‘Slave’s Lament’, written in 1792 by Robert Burns.

    The film matches the words of the poet to reggae music and is a collaboration with singer Ghetto Priest, accompanied by classical musicians.

    The song of tear-making poignancy and other worldly sorrow is written in the voice of a Senegalese person transported to a Virginian plantation.

    Robert Burns, though known for his abolitionist tendencies, was close to becoming a slave overseer on a Jamaican sugar plantation in the late 1780s.

    His finances in a mess and his writing going nowhere, the desperate poet saw a chance to get rich quick and put down a nine guineas deposit to secure his passage.

    But the success of publishing a book of his poetry to raise money for the trip caused his life to veer forever in a different direction.

    Fagen’s filmed version of the song is haunting, as different tones of the past and modes of action resonate to create the sense of a still lingering presence of a recently lived past.

    The video focuses on the singer’s teeth, a striking motif in Fagen’s recent work. There’s a vulnerability to teeth, as the only exposed bones in the human body and our principal source of social exchange.

    Fagen’s interest in the depiction of teeth was sparked by casts of George Washington’s mouth, and the discovery that his dentist had taken a philosophy course on the phenomenology of dentistry.

    One of Fagen's Indian Inks
    One of Fagen’s Indian Inks

    Possessing a raw immediacy, the Indian Inks look like the Mexican Day of the Dead masks, or Venetian Carnival Masques. Each painting is punctuated by an identical starting point of the artist own teeth. These sensory portraits are created by Fagen closing his eyes, feeling his teeth and blindly rendering them.

    From there he continues to paint blindly about how he feels, whether it is first thing on a glum Monday morning or the fizzing energy of going out on a Friday night.

    The Mighty Scheme: Graham Fagen
    Until 26 June
    CGP London and Matt’s Gallery
    The Gallery by the Pool
    SE16 2UA