East End Film Festival 2012 – preview

Swandown: Filmmaker Andrew Kötting and writer Iain Sinclair pedal a swan-shaped pedalo from the seaside in Hastings to Hackney via the English inland waterways.

The East End Film Festival 2012 gets into full swing tomorrow with a smorgasbord of movie offerings.

Eagerly-anticipated are a range of films with Hackney relevance, including:

Riot from Wrong (dir: Ted Nygh), a documentary examining the social unrest that swept through the UK last August. It features those involved in and affected by the trouble, as well as politicians, journalists and those close to Mark Duggan.

Nice Guy (dir: Pascal Bergamin), a feature film about an unemployed stay at home dad in Stoke Newington, who begins venturing out at night and soon becomes implicated in the web of a group of vicious criminals.

Dave Pearson; To Byzantium (dir: Derek Smith, UK), documenting how friends rescued the work of this highly prolific Hackney-born painter following his death in 2008.

The Tempest (dir: Rob Curry & Anthony Fletcher) blends drama and documentary to tell the story of a group of teenagers who meet twice a week to rehearse a performance of the Shakespeare play. It examines what it means to be British, a process altered by the London riots. Though set in South London, the director Rob Curry is from Hackney.

Swandown (dir Andrew Kötting), a travelogue of Olympic proportions when filmmaker and artist Andrew Kötting and writer-historian Iain Sinclair peddle a swan-shaped pedalo from Hastings to Hackney via inland waterways.

See our July print issue for more coverage of the festival.

East End Film Festival
Tuesday 3 – Sunday 8 July 2012