Close-Up: Abandoned Archives And Forgotten Histories Remembered
Tuesday February 1st, 20h, Doors open at 19.45h
The Working Men’s Club, 44-46 Pollard Row, London E2 6NB
Free entrance
Close-Up presents two films discovered in a stockpile of discarded 16mm film. The first film, Black Umbrella, is a new montage by filmmaker Louis Benassi, who uses footage of fires in London to present a unique vision of the capital during war and peacetime. Black Umbrella will be followed by Peter Watkins's notorious 1965 drama documentary The War Game, a complete 16mm copy of which was found along with the fire footage.
"…It became apparent that what was contained in these cans was in fact a forgotten history an abandoned archive spanning over five decades of film shot in London at major fire incidents. The burning down of Crystal Palace in 1934, the flying bomb raids on central and east London in 1940, the fire at the Houses of Parliament in 1958 and, even more shocking, a discarded 16mm print of Peter Watkins's 1965 film The War Game." — Louis Benassi
Black UmbrellaDirected by Louis Benassi
2011 | UK | 15 mins | B&W and Colour
16mm film triptych
With live score by Hector Castells & Richard Sides
A subjective re-edit and reinterpretation of 16mm documentary footage of fires in London from across the twentieth century. Black Umbrella is a triptych, using three simultaneous projections to provoke unexpected associations, meanings and present a visceral history of London, where architecture and landscape were constantly changed through fires and bombs.
The War Game
Directed by Peter Watkins
1965 | UK | 48 mins | B&W | 16mm
"Few films have caused such controversy as Peter Watkins' The War Game. Made for TV in 1965, the film is a drama documentary about a 'limited' nuclear attack on Kent. Blending fiction and fact to create a moving and startling vision of the personal as well as the public consequences of such an attack, Watkins exposes the inadequacy of the nations Civil Defence programme and questions the philosophy of nuclear deterrent. The row about The War Game went all the way to the Prime Minister Harold Wilson himself. It was mainly through cinema release in 1966 that the film gained a loyal and vociferous following. For 20 years The War Game was forcefully suppressed from TV screens anywhere in the world." — Patrick Murphy, from an essay included in the BFI release of The War Game
Please note that some of soundtrack is out-of-sync on this rare, discarded 16mm print.