Nightcleaners
FocusBerwick Street Film Collective27.10.2319:00 h Zumzeig Cinecooperatiu 8€
“Nightcleaners” is a documentary made by members of the Berwick Street Collective (Marc Karlin, Mary Kelly, James Scott and Humphry Trevelyan), about the campaign to unionize the women who cleaned office blocks at night and who were being victimized and underpaid. Intending at the outset to make a campaign film, the Collective was forced to turn to new forms in order to represent the forces at work between the cleaners, the Cleaner’s Action Group and the unions - and the complex nature of the campaign itself. The result was an intensely self-reflexive film, which implicated both the filmmakers and the audience in the processes of precarious, invisible labour. It is increasingly recognised as a key work of the 1970s and as an important precursor, in both subject matter and form, to current political art practice.
Biography
The Berwick Street Film collective was formed in 1970, and produced a series of feature documentaries until around 1980. The work of the collective was based on the filmmaking, both individual and collaborative, of its small group of members. Broadly speaking, these films were seen as being part of the avant garde of British documentary film in the 1970s. Influenced in part by filmmakers like Godard and Marker, their films dealt with some of the major political/cultural issues of the day, such as the conflict between groups of under-represented workers and working-class communities, and the political hierarchies in the trade unions and governments (“Nightcleaners”, 1975), the internment of Republican activists in the north of Ireland by the British government, and the growth of a new Republican consciousness (“Ireland: Behind the Wire”, 1974) and the experience of immigrant families in West London (“36’ to '77”, 1978).
Details
Duration: 90’
Direction: Berwick Street Collective
Year: 1975
Country: England
Language: English
Version: VOSE
Direction: Berwick Street Collective
Year: 1975
Country: England
Language: English
Version: VOSE
