Join us for an evening of films by community film groups including Interaction and Liberation Films, programmed by Ed Webb-Ingall.

Ed Webb-Ingall will provide a brief introduction and Andy Porter will be present after the screening to reflect on the processes of community filmmaking from the 1970s up until the present day.

Andy Porter has worked as a filmmaker and facilitator at community West London Media Workshop, Community Action Centre, The Albany and Hi8us South since the 1970s.

Ed Webb-Ingall is currently carrying out a PhD at Royal Holloway on the History and Practice of Community Video in London from 1968-1981. As part of his ongoing research he is also undertaking a two-year residency as part of the Communal Knowledge strand at The Showroom where he is developing a project working with the community around the gallery using video techniques borrowed from the 1970s.

Context

The period 1968 to 1981 witnessed the development of a medium which carried on the tradition of direct cinema and cinema verité but with a radically different form and content – that of community video making.

In 1978 the Arts Council of Great Britain issued a list of all the community arts projects known in the country, this totalled 178, of which between 50 and 100 used video. Born out of a combination of grassroots activism, a shift from marches and demonstrations to socially engaged arts practice and ushered in by a new video technology which enabled mobility and instant playback, groups such as Liberation Films, Albany Video, Interaction and West London Media Workshop began to use portable video technology to explore the developing identity politics of the period and the representation of communities of interest and locality. The community video movement sought to enable groups and individuals to take up the media once used to misrepresent them to engage in new forms of collective self-representation.

This is the second of Open School East’s monthly film club, which explores the topics of collective filmmaking and community representation.

Drinks and light food will be served.