Taken For Granted (1947) – Mogden

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If I ever had a budget to produce a DVD of The London Perambulator this classic 1947 film about the sewage system of West Middlesex, Taken For Granted would be on the extras. It is the backdrop to Nick Papadimitriou’s poetic vision of his region.
Here is he at Mogden Purification Works waxing lyrical about its significance “come and pray at this pile of turds because this is you”

The clip is from the London Screen Archive

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The London Perambulator – short clip and screening

The London Perambulator will be screening at Cine-City Brighton Film Festival next week – Nov 26th. There’ll be a Q&A afterwards with me and Nick Papadimitriou hosted by Grant Gee.
Here’s a small snippet of the film to give you a taster.
Info and booking for Cine-City is here – also check out the fantastic Jem Cohen programme

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London Perambulator Q&A at Housmans

Short clip from the Q&A that I did with Nick Papadimitriou, subject of the documentary – recorded at Housmans Bookshop, Kings Cross, London following a screening of the film.

The London Perambulator looks at the city we deny and the future city that awaits us. Leading London writers and cultural commentators Will Self, Iain Sinclair and Russell Brand explore the importance of the liminal spaces at the city’s fringe, it’s Edgelands, through the work of enigmatic and downright eccentric writer and researcher Nick Papadimitriou – a man whose life is dedicated to exploring and archiving areas beyond the permitted territories of the high street, the retail park, the suburban walkways.

For more information go to http://londonperambulator.wordpress.com

The night before Perambulator (and after Italy)

I haven’t posted for a couple of weeks due to a week spent in Italy, out of the range of internet. I also found myself linguistically intimidated by the landscape such was it’s beauty – not just in the standardised bucolic sense but in the passifying effect on the soul. The same thing happened when I rounded off a 7 month stint in the flat industrial plain of Emilia Romangna with two weeks in Tuscany. Over the preceding months I’d spewed out splenetic prose nightly – to the extent that I had the first draft of a book (that I plan to publish shortly on Lulu). Once in Tuscany the words dried up – it was all swooning olive groves and rhapsodic lunches.

I’ve also been pre-occupied with tomorrow night’s screening of the Nick Papadimitriou film at the Whitechapel Gallery in the East End Film Festival. There will also be an ‘Edgelands’ panel afterwards with Will Self, Iain Sinclair, Andrea Philips and me. What amazing company to find oneself in on a stage in the newly reburbed Gallery.
Aldgate East is one of the parts of London pregnant with memory for me. The distinctive smell of the tube platform hurtles me back to 89-92, City Poly, in various states of inebriation. I never once ventured inside the Whitechapel in those years. And now The London Perambulator makes its world premiere there.

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