East End Film Festival 2010
When faced with something large and overwhelming, it is a common trait of my personality that I regress, becoming so uncontrollably excited that I am unable to think and behave like the rational young woman that I am.
A similar phenomenon often occurs when it comes to all things film related. Imagine my predicament when I came upon the cinematic sweet-shop that was the East End Film Festival 2010 programme.
Launched in 2001 by the London Borough of Tower Hamlets Arts and Events, the EEFF produces a veritable pick ‘n’ mix of countless film screenings, workshops, music, exhibitions, outdoor events and high profile guests from around the world, making it less a film festival and more a shameless and deserved celebration of the capital’s Orient.
This year, boasting their largest programme yet, the EEFF outdid themselves, opening with a premiere of the newly resurrected and remastered Bronco Bullfrog, introducing Barney Platt-Mills’ East End working class mod’s to our screens once again, ahead of its re-release this summer.
From Heritage Pub Crawls around the East’s most historical and most loved drinking establishments including The Ten Bells and The Blind Beggar, to a late night Silent Cinema screening of Alfred Hitchcock’s 1927 classic The Lodger with live musical accompaniment from Minima at Spitalfields Market, the East rightfully asserted its reputation as the stomping ground for some of London’s most varied and vibrant cultural happenings.
And it is precisely this reputation that makes the East End Film Festival such an amazing event. The East’s variety has always been crucial to its charm, being one of the few places where graffiti art, side-street multi-cultural cuisine, bagels and 1940s tea dresses all co-exist in beautiful and unexpected harmony, but also in those who call it home. Whether they are on screen or behind the camera, the festival is very much a celebration of these people and the capabilities of the east London community.
As part of the ‘Riot, Race and Rock ‘n’ Roll’ programme, Who Shot the Sheriff paid testament to this very notion, an inspiring documentary about the biggest mass movement in UK history when the punk movement, led by the likes of The Clash and The Specials, banded together at the 1978 Carnival in Tower Hamlet’s Victoria Park to form the Rock Against Racism coalition to stop the white supremacist National Front infiltrating Britain.
Continuing the message of the need for community and racial conflict in the East, East End Tales, a collection of ten short films by UK directors, presented an eye-opening insight into the untold lives of East End residents. From mixed race relationships, gang crime and police brutality to Jewish beat poetry, drug-fuelled skinny-jeaned scenesters and morning-after stumbles down Brick Lane, these films created one of the most surreally varied but startling accurate depictions of East End life you could hope for.
While Ryan Vernava’s Prick and Debbie Tucker Green’s Heat are both vying for my favourite short, each demonstrated the capability, and perhaps necessity, of a director to voice the stories and struggles of the East End people through their lens, in all their shapes, sizes and colours. This fight for community and integration became an overriding theme, permeating not only the celluloid but the whole ethos of the festival, from sitting amongst strangers watching a classic in a marketplace to simply experiencing the city through another race’s eyes.
Like the proverbial rolling stone, it looks like the East End Film Festival’s momentum will only increase next year with its reputation for showcasing the best up and coming directors and poignant political statements combined with beautiful and provocative camera mastery already seeping outside London to the rest of the world. As their tagline boldly declares, ‘this is not where the east ends but where it begins’ – the perfect epithet to encapsulate the so often unacknowledged power of the East Enders…and I don’t mean those Walford types.
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