me – 5

Scrapbooks of my Young People Cinema Workshop in 1979/80 were appreciated in 2018 (!!) by people working in Favelas in S.Paulo. That success came from an unexpected corner.

They said: “That is where WE are”.
The reaction from Anthony Davies in an email to me was “They were incredibly excited to see their own work reflected in the past, in London, in your work!”

Anthony himself, aged 15, was a member of my workshop. Now as a tutor at Central Saint Martins Art School, UAL, London, he got more than 750 pages of 18 scrapbooks digitised and covered the wall in a community space in S.Paulo with print-outs. These hung alongside artwork and posters from young people living in occupied housing estates in the outskirts of S.Paulo.

For me this is not so much a story of success in my teaching efforts as a success in my intentions and direction to work on changes within society, in theory and in practise.

For me it was about trying to find out how much confusion, even elements of contradiction I could accept and allow myself to enjoy.

I tried to answer this about 40 years after the workshop took place, collecting all information I had kept in a shed.

I analysed what went on. It took me a long time.

Now there is a book to flicker through:

STARTING FROM SCRATCH

It might be more organised than the project ever was but it captures my overall intentions and my appreciation about what came out.

Though, that didn’t take away the uncertainty about what it really was and why others responded so positively, some praising it.

I think it is the opposition to school that most of us carry and that I benefited from.

It might be the invitation – and longing for so many – to be taken seriously in their willingness to learn. Our project was giving young people trust in personal experiences of learning

WHO ARE WE? + The Model Four Corners 9
PART 1 INTRODUCTION 10
I HOW TO START ? 22

PART 2 THE YOUNG PEOPLE CINEMA WORKSHOP 23
PART 3 FILM AND FILMING 34

II HOW TO TRUST YOURSELF ? 47
PART 4 NOTHING TO DO 48
PART 5 WESSEX STREET EVENT 66
PART 6 CHANGING NIGHTS 80

III HOW TO JOIN IN ? 103
PART 7 SCRIPTS and Lisa’s script 104
PART 8 MUSIC 134
PART 9 SETS 150

IV HOW TO VALUE YOURSELF ? 175

PART 10 ANIMATION 176
PART 11 GRAPHICS 192
PART 12 CREDITS 216

POWER

I want to get famous
WHEN I GET FAMOUS
WHEN…will I be famous?

NOTHING TO DO

This phrase from YOUNG PEOPLE. It felt like a ghost in the room to us. OUR mood was DO SOMETHING, but WHAT?

Ruhul had very ambitious ideas about his future

We set up ‘our’ room with notice boards, screens, speakers, desks and shelves, notices pinned up, books and magazines and a table with art supplies – rough paper and pens – and all this In the basement of Oxford House in Bethnal Green.

Here is PAUL homing in

Ruhul had very ambitious ideas about his future

PART 5 – WESSEX STREET EVENT

Experiments of scratching film – celluloid and slides – appealed to me. It has been a quick, rough and effective method for children to express themselves in a classroom and darkroom. The technique was also used by filmmakers of THE LONDON FILM MAKERS CO-OP at the time.

I scribbled this down after talking to Roland who worked with us on my film “IS THAT IT?”

NOTHlNGTO D0
There’s nothing to do round here
So we just take it out on other people
Nothing to do round here
So we go round writing on all the walls
No‹hin to do round here
So we smash up all the telephone boxes
Nothing to do round here
So we piss in the lifts and make them smell

Please sir, give us something to do
And then we’ll be okay
Please sir, give us something to do
And then we’ll be okay
But there’s nothing to do
Nothing to do
Nothing to do
Nothing to do

Smash you in the mouth
Smash your face
Kick you in the teeth
Take your money

ALL THE SPLATTERED CHILDREN
Children play up on the twelth floor
Walk along the balcony
Walk along a tightrope
And then they topple over

Splattered on the grass below
Like eggs inside a rubbish chute
Papers on the ground
And their parents crying

Angry at the people
Bitter towards the people
Swearing at the people
Who made them live in the sky

Ambulance and police arrive
Fire Brigade arrive too late
Still — they saved a cat
That got stuck up a tree

Walk past all the blocks of flats
Look at all the grassy lawns
You can see the stains there
From all the splattered children

1961 Oct

III HOW TO JOIN IN?

Paul Hallam working in a script session

This was the second part of our course and a fresh start to come up with a script that we wanted and could agree on, as these notes by Paul make clear.

Youth worker John Lancaster came along. He supported us in every way. Weeks later he helped with the creation of the music and a band in the CRYPT of the nearby church.

PART 8 – MUSIC

PART 9 – SET BUILDING

PART 11 – GRAPHICS

But here we are in 1980, the FOUR CORNER YOUNG PEOPLE’s CINEMA GROUP

SET BUILDING

IV – HOW TO VALUE YOURSELF

This was the introduction of my Scrapbooks and the film ‘DON’T THINK SO’ to STUDENTS IN ST MARTINS SCHOOL OF ART
EXPERIMENTAL TEACHING UNIT in OCT 2017

I became aware that I had turned the act of filmmaking upside down, away from anything “proper” into anything possible.

Anthony Davies and Lisa Warren, the scriptwriter, 2017 remembered it as great fun.

They liked the film (in the end) as a document. That made me happy, because really, I was still uncertain years later about what I had done or if this had only been an expression of my personal drive at the time, and my mix of curiosity and versatility (“Vielseitigkeit”).

I am grateful that Four Corners in the 1980s gave me the unexpected chance to develop “MY way”. I had stored up a lot of issues in the 70s that I could not fulfil.
Now I managed, with a few applications, to raise some money for a project run in the way I felt close to.

Four Corners in 1979 consisted of the 4 founder members :
Jo Davis, Mary Pat Leece, Ron Peck and me, Wilf Thust

Between 1980 and 1982 it came to include Paul Hallam, Richard Taylor and Lis Rhodes

IS THAT IT ?

What happened after1981 and from 1982 to 1985?

I had the opportunity to work on a film with money allocated to Four Corners by Channel 4 through the new Film Workshop Agreement.
This grant didn’t cover any money to live on. I had to teach in The German School negotiating hours from one year to the next. It led to interesting comparisons between schooling, de-schooling and working on my own.

With that in mind, nevertheless, I really enjoyed the chance to develop my own film. It happened between 1982 and 1985 with the help of Rick Mann and Hilary Dunn, who supported me, introducing local young people to take photos and to develop them and leading them into script writing and acting out what they could bring up from living in this area in Tower Hamlets.

My film was meant to be a mix between their contributions and my inputs and a diary about our exchanges, a kind of report. A soundtrack was produced by the musician in residence of Tower Hamlets at the time, Shaun Tozer, who initiated a large group of young people using the new Music Workshop, “The Steamroom”, run by Jon Wilkinson. All this was organised by the Arts Committee and the Youth Services with John Lancaster.

For me the staircase in Bethnal Green Tube station became the image that holds the film together. But why? The accident after a suspected bomb attack in 1943 leading to 173 people dying when falling over each other on the way down to this station created images of horror in me. (Perhaps that is what my daughter called “my trauma” reappearing unconsciously bringing me back to experiences I lived through when I was four years old and with seven members of our extended family escaped from the Russians in overpacked goods trains and lived in bunkers.) Bringing this up was my story for the young people, a reminder of Hitlers fascist horrors. I included graphics from Gustave Dore, about East London, and Henry Moore, of people hiding and sleeping in Underground Stations.

The entrance to Bethnal Green Tube Station now.

Pictures from the inquest – open-ended – about what really happened and why?

In 2023 (!!) I heard on Channel 4 news that Tower Hamlets has the highest amount of people living in poverty in Britain.

In 1985 I collected data from Tower Hamlets Council which included payments between men and women and housing costs related to income and other injustices. It didn’t paint a rosy future for the teenagers joining our workshops.

But I made them aware of what it means to live at the bottom of the heap with the need to get out and up the ladder. How very sad that situations in that respect have not changed
nearly 40 years later!!

On 1st June 2023(!!) I heard in a Radio4 program called ‘Great Lives’ in which Tony Ben was speaking. I had admired him at the time in the 80s when he was asked if class distinctions are essential in society. His answer was: “I am not an egalitarian at all and believe that all people are different but what I object to in our society is the obstacle race that prevents people from what by their nature and origin and talent they could become. British society is from top to bottom riddled with prejudice about people who don’t use their words and their accent, not their origin, their family, their education.”

The graphics of my film and comments from adults in my film explain just that in different ways. (So do graphics here from Gustave Dore relating back to the 19th Century.)

I called my film ‘IS THAT IT ?’
because it reveals the UPS and DOWNS as I felt they were in the East End of London and in Britain at the time.

I compared it to living on a staircase, a vision I saw in a montage by John Heartfield in the 1930s. He produced posters as a warning against Hitler’s market economy and his racism.

When I heard Tony Benn led the Anti-War Coalition in 2001, even now I identified as a Conscientious Objector. I was proud of my English “Parents in Law” when they saw my film in the NFT at the London Film Festival 1986. They shared my belief!!!

LOTS
My position as a teacher in the German School had forced me to teach religion. A catholic teacher was there but the headmaster had to employ a teacher for each denomination, that was the rule at the time in Germany. I used the chance to teach humanist and political awareness as I would call it. I invited many speakers into my lessons from outside humanitarian organisations and other religions, an almost impossible organisational effort but a success to my mind and without any objections from the school.

In 1985 I finished my film. This was a time of high financial pressure in Four Corners. That had to do with growing expectations on the group from many people joining in but also financial support and fund-raising options dwindling under Thatcher’s Government. The political left lost County Hall, Tower Hamlets lost the Isle of Dogs and the Australian industrialist Murdoch destroyed the printing press there, sacking 6000 workers. We lived so near to these events. Much later I met Chris Reeves through the May Day Rooms and saw his film “WAPPING: The Workers Story”. In 2016 (!!) Chris digitised all six parts of my film

‘IS THAT IT?’ :

scene 1 Young people in Bethnal Green invited to photograph, act and film.

scene 2 Differences between working class and middle class life prospects.

scene 3 Tube Disaster in Bethnal Green, seen as connected to Hitlers war.

scene 4 Boys aspirations in contrast to their future living in Tower Hamlets.

scene 5 How to handle racism and sexism openly displayed in sessions?

scene 6 A black youth killed in a police station. Why? Are we in control?

I questioned almost everything at that time. My films are riddled with questions.
I felt a need to talk, question and show my work to people of my generation. My mind was looking to do that in Four Corners. I loved the idea of getting film seasons together, a kind of binder between an audience and filmmakers.

This happened once a week on six nights. We chose a selection of films under one theme and invited open contributions, comments, readings or little acts from guests. I was happy to show unfinished products to give people an understanding of what filmmaking is about.

These are titles of the Seasons I organised myself next to many others and their seasons:
IN THE CLASSROOM
AUSCHWITZ, the Exhibition FILM and MUSIC
Animations: DONE FOR EFFECT VIOLENCE in FILMS

I also loved our show window, the site between people looking in and the projector screening out to them. We could project slides onto the window for people passing by outside. But mostly we had photos, montages and posters on display just like I always did in school corridors. I realised how much I still was a teacher in essence.

By 1986 people who lived in the Four Corners building had one by one moved out, Jo and me included. Already in 1983 Jo felt overwhelmed by fund-raising activities and the expectation to be a project initiator.

A real success was Ruhul Amin’s 16mm, 15 min, film ‘Turbo London’.
He came to my Cinema workshop in 1979, was then taught to make his film in Four Corners, with the help of Richard Taylor, and later advanced to get a commission from Channel 4. He became successful in India and Bangladesh.

Four Corners in the early days became a seeding ground – almost by accident – for talents in the world of filming, script writing, acting and recording.

By 1986 nobody lived in the Four Corners building any more. There was the women’s film distribution group, ‘CIRCLES’, and the building consisted of offices, cutting rooms and the cinema. There were workshops and hiring activities and the place had “an institutional
feel to it” as Jo put it. I would have loved to be employed within a group to develop the successful initiatives we put into practice further. But there was no chance.

NO SAFE WAYS
After my film I was penniless again but very lucky to get an artist in residence grant from Jenny Lomax in the educational department of the Whitechapel Art Gallery.

I worked in Lauriston Primary school. We liked the very much loved and progressive headteacher there, Richard Lewes.

He provided excellent conditions for an exciting project and here and in this way I really enjoyed working with children.

I took little groups of them out of their lessons and introduced them to games using a video camera, often passing the camera on between them.

The central point for them to understand was the camera, with the lens in front and the viewing screen in the back, that they could look at. I explained the relationship between our eyes and our brain / our memory. They slowly got used to filming effects and to record what they had built.