A triple bill of films that celebrate the entanglement of bodies and place, with a special focus on the city of London, its shelters, rafts and sanctuaries: Chiara Ambrosio’s ‘Raft - A London Story’, a screening of work by The Parlour Collective, and Joseph Despins’s 1976 feature, ‘The Moon Over The Alley.’ With an opening performance from Bird Radio and James Hesford.
Doors 6.30pm [screening begins promptly at 7pm!] [there will be breaks throughout!]
Tickets £10 standard, £15 solidarity
Raft - A London Story is a musical haunting, a mercurial cinematic monument to a city, and a celebration of friendship and art as the bricks and mortar of a particular kind of raft – one that is well equipped to float even as the waters rise. Part "Wizard of Oz" part "Wings of Desire", it is the story of a specific place at a specific time, poised on the fragile edge between appearance and disappearance, past and present, dream and wake. A contemporary fairytale, seeking new forms of sanctuary, meaning, and belonging at a time of loneliness, displacement and erasure. Featurinq: Bird Radio, John Bently, Jeremy Reed, Joanne Roberts, Nawroz Oramari, Helena Hunter and Mark Peter Wright, James Hesford, Brian Catling, Gareth Evans, Sukhdev Sandhu, Joseph Marinus, Roger K Burton, Chiara Ambrosio, The Horse Hospital, Tanya Peixoto, Bookartbookshop and the river Thames.
"Living ghosts summoned from their cells wake and wander. Shot with elegant shadows and pools of sudden illumination. A poem of light to be saved, secured, cast adrift."
- Iain Sinclair, author and psychogeographer
"This film stands as a fabulous poetic testament to the hidden culture in this great city of ours. Triumphant in its message, it is compulsory viewing for all would-be art and film students!"
- Roger K Burton, Founder and curator of The Horse Hospital and the London Contemporary Wardrobe
The Parlour Collective are a group of artists working with site‑responsive performance and film. Their practice explores the psychological and somatic experience of landscape, focusing on subtle patterns, repetitions, and fractures that emerge through shared presence in place. Rather than fixed narratives, they attend to fleeting moments of attention, pause, and musing, where landscape, structure and human presence briefly align. They have worked internationally across diverse sites, from operating theatres to remote islands, allowing place and atmosphere to actively shape the work.
The Moon Over The Alley is a 1976 British experimental musical feature, directed by Joseph Despins and written by William Dumaresq. This strange London-set musical, scored by Galt MacDermont (who composed the songs for Hair) explores the problems facing the multicultural residents in a Notting Hill boarding house of the early 1970s, destined for demolition (incidentally occupying the space where Grenfell Tower would be built). Dark and disturbing, yet also dreamlike and tender, this astonishing film defies all categorisation.