Local films for local people ...

Just before Christmas Karen & I heard that our film Living with the Tudors has been accepted for SXSW film festival in Texas, so possibly another trip there this year. Meanwhile all my activities of late have been focussed on a rather more local level...

Before we moved to the Pie 'n' Mash in 2002 I spent some time with Len Cook who had run the shop and was about to retire. We spent a funny day filming his routine built up over 20 odd years. After we moved in we were swamped with trying to turn the building into a home (the flat above was more or less derelict) and studio. Five years later I finally managed to edit together a short film from my footage which I sent to Len. Yesterday I took copies to the Hackney Museum and Hackney Archives. In the archive I looked through the 100 odd images they have of our market street, it made me rather sad to see that only 20 years ago the street market was still thriving, and that our shop front is now the only original one in the short run of shops at our end of the street. It's particularly sad that Tescos at the end of the road probably has a lot to do with the loss of the stalls when you know that Jack Cohen (Tesco's founder) started out with a stall on this market.

Anyway as I cycled back on a miserable Hackney evening I thought about our market street (which I love) and what it means to be 'local', how places change and if these changes can really mean 'improvement'. 

My other 'local' activities recently have really increased my sense of confusion about our own street and the part we play as residents here. Tim & I have been trying to make a project on the Boundary Estate called 'A Song for a Circus'. The Estate and the bandstand at its centre (Arnold Circus) are a unique part of East London. Built in the 1890's as one of London's first council housing projects, the buildings there now completely replaced former slums (the Jago) made up of tiny streets. Researching in the fantastically appointed (and not in a 'Ideas store' way) Tower Hamlets archive, I came across a list of the jobs held by all the inhabitants of the area before and after the estate was built. They are just lists, but somehow they are much more than this ... the lost occupations such as cats' meat sellers, japanners & wireworkers, box makers and French polishers speak of the changes in the area to me in quite a beautiful way.

I can't deny that we are part of the changing face of our East End market street, how you participate in this change is I guess up to each individual. Anyway, if you want to see our film by an artist and a Pie 'n' Mash maker take a trip to Hackney Archives and ask for us.