We are going to make a round-the-clock collaborative film about Hackney, as part of Open Cinema, a collective adventure in digital filmmaking and sharing which has been running at Open School East since March.

24-hour Hackney is an adaptation of The Sound We See, a project started by Echo Park Film Center, a neighbourhood media arts centre from Los Angeles who came to present their work at Open School East earlier this year.

The idea is to create a 24-hour cinematic journey with each hour of the day represented as one minute on film. Filming happens in groups of 3 or more, with every group tackling an hour, shooting a maximum of 4 minutes and editing it down to 1 minute. At the end we piece together the 24 minutes, screen the film and invite musicians to improvise a soundtrack.

The type of filming is entirely open, the sole requirement is to provide a representation of Hackney. This can be personal, poetic, political, abstract, thematic or dramatic; it can deal with any subject relating to the neighbourhood; it can involve people, trees, animals, buildings or all of these combined. We will provide equipment as well as help with both filming and editing when required.

If you are interested in joining the Open School East community and taking part in this collective labour of imagination, join on Wednesday 27 May at 5.30pm at Open School East. If you can’t make the date but would still like to be involved, email mike@openschooleast.org and we can arrange a time to introduce you to the project.

And if you’re interested in Open Cinema (visit here), join us on the same day at 3pm for a hands-on filming workshop led by Iris Wakulenko.

ABOUT : THE SOUND WE SEE

The Sound We See: Growing A Global Slow Film Movement initially developed as part of Echo Park Film Center’s free youth filmmaking program in Los Angeles. The Sound We See uses analog filmmaking techniques and the “City Symphony” genre practiced in the 1920s by Walter Ruttmann and Dziga Vertov as starting points to explore communal creative process and contemporary environments. Discovering and redefining techniques of past avant-garde urban documentarians, 37 teenagers – with little or no prior filmmaking experience – worked with 16mm cameras and black-and-white stock to create a stunning 24-hour cinematic journey with each hour of the day represented as one minute on film. The Sound We See: A Los Angeles City Symphony premiered with a bespoke live score performed by a talented ensemble of local musicians. The project sparked a global “Slow Film” movement with youth communities in The Netherlands, Vietnam, India and Canada’s Yukon Territory creating their own 16mm and Super 8 City Symphonies, not only shooting but processing (using both traditional and eco-friendly chemistry) and editing the film by hand, and presenting public exhibitions of the finished work in non-traditional venues. Each community pushes the process to new directions and discoveries; The Sound We See is an ongoing cinematic conversation on the relevance of handmade film in the 21st century.

See the films here.

Biographies: Lisa Marr and Paolo Davanzo are filmmakers, educators and community cinema activists whose work is a catalyst for creative collaboration and positive social change. Originally from Canada and Italy respectively, they currently live and work in Los Angeles where they run the Echo Park Film Center, a non-profit neighborhood media arts center with a focus on analog film education and resources. In 2008, they launched the EPFC Filmmobile, an old schoolbus transformed into an eco-friendly cinema and film school on wheels. As The Here & Now, Marr and Davanzo travel the world, bringing handmade movies and music to the masses. For more information click here.