Making a Community Video Archive and its Gaps and Emergent Spaces
Curated and introduced by: Phoebe Beckett Chingono, Jaye Hudson, and Cici Peng (LCVA team)
With panelists: Tony Dowmunt and Andy Porter (LCVA founding directors)
This film programme presents newly acquired material to discern gaps and emergent spaces in the archive.
The selected videos address issues from grassroots perspectives: bringing into view alternative feminisms and their intersections; political organising techniques – counterposing angles from a local electoral campaign and a direct action group; as well as performance, non-performance, and informal modes of self-representation that explore themes of crime, intimacy, and sexuality, a private realm not often considered to be a part of ‘community media’. Through these works, the programme explores resonances and discontinuities across strategies of representation, forms of institutional critique, and methods of community mobilisation.
The post-screening panel will include LCVA founding directors Tony Dowmunt and Andy Porter, who will share their personal perspectives on their respective paths into community video practice of the 1970s and discuss how and why they came to establish the LCVA.
The session is designed as an intergenerational dialogue with the intention of asking what we might learn from past community media practices when viewed through a contemporary critical lens.
Films:
Things that Mother Never Told Us (1977) informed by the methods of consciousness-raising groups from the Women’s Liberation Movement, Carry Gorney uses video to collaborate with women on Milton Keynes council estates talking about relationships, motherhood, marriage, and identity.
Open Door: Transex Liberation Group (clip) part of the Channel 4 programme series Open Door, it features a rare broadcast of early trans organising.
Dead Proud (1988), written and performed by Second Wave, presents sharp, funny sketches by black and white working-class women, drawing on their experiences to explore teenage pregnancy, school, and family.
Election 74 Part 2 (1974) captures a political debate on party organising, ending with voter interviews at a polling station in Tower Hamlets.
You Got to be Choking (1994) documents the grassroots campaign against the M11 Link Road by communities in East London during 1993–94.
Us & Crime (1974), by Basement Film Group, features candid, humorous interviews with peers about crimes they’ve committed.
Liz and Pauline (1970–79), a black-and-white video interview with two young Black women reflecting on love, work, and hopes for the future.
Red Bucket is a satirical performance by a Gay Sweatshop offshoot, a parody of straight and gay norms, exposing class and gender tensions in queer theatre.
