Dirt Screen celebrates filth at the pictures
8 June 2011
On show is the expansive vision of global filth in Meghna Haldar's 'Dirt'; the ethics of waste in the Oscar-nominated 'Waste Land', as refuse from Brazil's largest landfill is recycled into art; Josh Fox's 'Gasland', an exploration scandal of groundwater contamination in North America's most polluted gas drilling sites that won the Special Jury Prize at Sundance; and the Berwick Street Collective's seminal 1970s documentary 'Nightcleaners', on the rights of night-time workers. Directors and producers will be on hand to discuss their films, and there is also a specially programmed selection of animated and live-action dirty shorts from the Encounters International Film Festival.
16 June 2011, 19.00-21.00
Dirt
Director: Meghna Haldar (2008)
Followed by a discussion and Q&A with director Meghna Haldar
Dirt isn't just a four-letter word: it contains a world of meaning from the divine to the profane. Meghna Haldar's astonishing film explores a world of stories, from the slums of Kolkata to Vancouver's Downtown Eastside to a barbecue joint in central Texas. A quixotic odyssey into all things unclean, 'Dirt' digs deep to illuminate the positively filthy experience of being human. Join us for a special screening of this feature-length documentary,
19 June 2011, 12.00-21.10
12.00-14.35 Waste Land (98 mins)
Directors: Lucy Walker, João Jardim, Karen Harley (2010)
Followed by Q&A with the film's producer, Angus Aynsley
Filmed over nearly three years, WASTE LAND follows renowned artist Vik Muniz as he journeys from his home base in Brooklyn to his native Brazil and the world's largest garbage dump, Jardim Gramacho, located on the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro. There he photographs an eclectic band of catadores - self-designated pickers of recyclable materials. His collaboration with these inspiring characters as they recreate photographic images of themselves out of garbage reveals both the dignity and the despair of the catadores as they begin to reimagine their lives.
15.20-18.00 Gasland (104 mins)
Director: Josh Fox (2010)
Followed by Q&A with the 'Ecologist' magazine
When filmmaker Josh Fox is asked to lease his land for drilling, he embarks on a cross-country odyssey uncovering a trail of secrets, lies and contamination. A recently drilled nearby Pennsylvania town reports that residents are able to light their drinking water on fire. This is just one of the many absurd and astonishing revelations of a new country called GASLAND. Part vérité travelogue, part exposé, part mystery, part bluegrass banjo meltdown, part showdown.
18.45-21.10 Nightcleaners (90 mins)
Berwick Street Film Collective (1975)
Followed by Q&A with Humphry Trevelyan, Berwick Street Film Collective
Nightcleaners Part 1 was 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 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.
A specially commissioned dirty shorts programme will be running on a 60-minute loop from 12.00 to 18.00 in the Forum.
All screenings at Dirt Screen are free, but booking is required.
Click here to book
Image: A still from ‘Waste Land’. Credit: Vik Muniz Studio.
