You can watch the film through Curzon on Demand
Make Your Own Damn Art breaches the boundaries of London and heads north for a screening and Q&A at Manchester’s Cornerhouse on Monday 29th October 6.30pm
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Filmed in sunny Leytonstone – London’s lost cultural quarter.
There’s more info about the film here
My documentary about fellow-Leytonstonian Bob and Roberta Smith nearly comes home today with a screening at Sugarhouse Studios in Stratford.
This will be the third screening of the film after the East End Film Festival and Portobello Film Festival. Doing the two previous introductions to the film and a Q&A has made be remember that the film really began life on this blog.
As I researched the area I came across the Leytonstone Centre for Contemporary Art and Bob’s work and wanted to find out more. If you click on the tags below you’ll be able to follow the evolution of the project.
After Sugarhouse there will be a screening at Curzon Soho on Saturday 22nd September
Details of the screenings of the film can be found on the Makeyourowndamnfilm website
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Tomorrow sees the ‘world premiere’ in of my documentary Make Your Own Damn Art – the world of Bob and Roberta Smith in the East End Film Festival. It’s 3 years almost to the day that I started filming – first at the Portman Gallery in Bethnal Green then damn the next morning as Bob created his mobile brownfield site to sit on the forecourt at the Royal Festival Hall.
The prospect of the post-screening Q&A has forced to me think again why I made the film in the first place. In truth, the possibly unexpected answer can be found on this blog – it came from my fascination with Leytonstone and wanting to learn about the place I had just moved to.
I’d seen a poster for the Leytonstone Centre of Contemporary Art and wanted to learn more about it and the artist who created it. The film in a way is the result of that curiosity. So although it’s about a unique voice in British art and the importance of art in society it is also as much about localism for me personally.
I wonder how that will go down at the Q&A tomorrow.
In the afternoon tomorrow I’ve got the huge honour of hosting the discussion and Q&A with Andrew Kotting and Iain Sinclair following the screening of their film Swandown.
I’ve been following this project – a psychogeographer’s dream ticket – ever since I first heard it mooted in 2007. So tonight I’ll be skimming back through my Iain Sinclair archive and re-watching Andrew Kotting’s short films in preparation – what a hardship.
Editing can sometimes be a bit of an assache but then you stumble on a clip like this.
And I doubt this will make it into the finished film about Bob and Roberta Smith.
It was filmed during one of Bob’s Make Your Own Damn Music shows on Resonance fm.
There’s more info about the film here
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| The Castle ‘honesty’ Bookshop |
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| I could feel the call of the Breacon Beacons all weekend |
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| River Wye – Offa’s Dyke Path runs along the left bank |
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| Globe at Hay – site of the Crunch Festival |
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| Bob & Roberta Smith and Jake Chapman amongst the yurts at Crunch |
Welsh language train announcements at Newport Station by Fugueur
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