Films on Fridges: cool cinema on Fish Island

The entrance to the Films on Fridges cinema, partly constructed from recycled fridge parts. Photograph: © Hackney Citizen

Showing films in unlikely places reaches new extremes in Hackney Wick this summer with a three-week festival of Films on Fridges at Foreman smokehouse’s yard on nearby Fish Island.

The event is somewhat deceptively named, as the films are shown on a conventional screen, but the theme of the venue is intended to evoke a heap of discarded refrigerators (one of Europe’s largest) that was for long an unmissable feature of the local landscape.

The films themselves largely revolve around sport, reaching forward to the Olympic future of the area (the main stadium is directly across the canal from the venue).

The festival was launched on 27 July with a live band and a sell-out screening of classic boxing flick Rocky. Shows run through 13 August, with upcoming films including Cool Runnings, Pumping Iron, Rio Breaks, Slapshot and Chariots of Fire.

There will also be special night of shorts by local filmmakers on 10 August in partnership with the East End Film Festival.

Films on Fridges is the creation of Emma Rutherford, a spatial planning and urban design MA student at London Metropolitan University.

Rutherford explains the rationale for the project thus: “The project speaks primarily to the profound transformation underway in Hackney Wick, Fish Island, and really, the whole of East London. It seeks to resurrect elements of the ‘Fridge Mountain’ to provide a creative platform for showcasing the past, present, and future histories associated with the local area and allow a space for these varying narratives to co-exist.”

The site is adorned which numerous refrigerator doors, which serve as chairs, tables, and a quirky frame for the screen.

Rutherford explains how these were come by: “We have been working for months with the Environment Agency to understand the regulation and policy surrounding fridge recycling and following an understanding of how the materials could be used we partnered with Sims Recycling Solutions, the world’s largest electronics recycler, who were generous enough to provide us with fridge doors for the event.

“The fridge doors, which have already started the recycling process through the removal of coolants, condensers, and the main bodies of the unit, will be returned to the recycling depot to finish the recycling process. This is just a brief fun stop in their recycling life-cycle.”

As well as Sims and Formans, sponsors also include Picture House and Tiger.

Tickets cost £10 and can be booked online at We Got Tickets. For more details see the Films on Fridges website.