Housing Problems, London Short Film Festival 2025, ICA
Rents are spiralling, housing conditions are worsening and property speculation is rampant. How can we challenge these assaults on the basic human right of a home? How have previous generations struggled for a safe and secure roof over their heads? Can we envision, demand and achieve housing for all?
This programme poses such questions across the intertwined histories of British cinema and housing struggles. From artist-filmmaker abstractions to activist video, the range of aesthetic approaches variably interrogate the emotional, strategic and utopian registers of housing movements across squatters’ groups, rent strikes and tenants’ unions.
Gentrification and unregulated landlordism are fracturing communities, while social housing disintegrates and profits soar. However, as these films constantly underline we can and should resist.
Curated and presented by Ed Webb-Ingall and Oliver Dixon
Housing Problems, dir. Realist Film Unit, UK 1935, 15mins
Squatters, dir. Cinema Action, UK 1969, 17mins
Murchison Tenants, dir. Andy Porter, UK 1970s, 6mins
Squat Now While Stocks Last, dir. Sue Hall / John ‘Hoppy’ Hopkins, UK 1974, 6mins
Blight, dir. John Smith, UK 1996, 14mins
Hostile Housing, dir. London Renters Union, UK 2020, 7mins
Dampbusters, dir. Winnie Herbstein, UK 2021, 19mins
A Bedroom for Everyone, dir. Ed Webb-Ingall, UK 2023, 15mins
