A rare showing this Friday at the
Mayday Rooms (88 Fleet Street EC4Y 1DH) of an experimental film made in 1974 at Grove Park Station, Lewisham.This from the organisers:
'RAILMAN: A First Attempt at Collective Film Making - FOUR CORNERS FILMS in 1974
Friday 17th April 2015 7-9pm, MDR Screening Room
In 1976 Four Corners Films (Joanna Davis, Mary Pat Leece, Ron Peck and Wilf Thust) released
Railman,
a film concerned as much with the distribution of roles within the film
collective as with getting "as close as possible to the life and
routines" of an NUR station master. Filmed at Grove Park Station,
Lewisham, in south east London, and set against the backdrop of state
divestment in transport infrastructure,
Railman might be
regarded as a modest and experimental corrective to more technically
accomplished and officially sanctioned British Transport Films:
Rush Hour,
Wires over the Border and
Accident.
In the spirit of MayDay Rooms' commitment to opening out historical
material onto the present, Wilf Thust, a founder member of the Four
Corners collective, will introduce the film and help shape a discussion
on the terms and conditions of collective filmmaking as a mode of
political or politicising practice, as a form of group process....
Background
In 1974, four London Film School students - Joanna Davis, Mary Pat
Leece, Ron Peck and Wilf Thust - agree to work together as part of a
course requirement to hand in a film script. They begin by interviewing
the PR rep of the National Union of Railwaymen (NUR) and then meet with
the course director of the London Film School, Ralph Bond, who in turn
secures an interview with Ray Buckton, the general secretary of the rail
drivers' trade union ASLEF. This preparatory work predictably draws the
filmmakers into the labyrinth of British Rail bureaucracy, culminating
in a failed negotiation to obtain permission to film on BR property on
the grounds that an "irresponsible film" or any form of
misrepresentation might damage the company's recruitment drive. This
exchange is scripted and then re-staged as the opening sequence of the
film. From that point on, the filmmakers move into a more clandestine
mode and having identified a location, Grove Park Station in Lewisham,
decide to circumvent management and contact workers directly.
As with much Four Corners' work from this period, the 'subject' speaks and
Railman
is filmed almost entirely in the station master's place of work, the
platform office. In this setting, albeit only for a brief moment, the
relationship between the film collective and station master permits the
unarticulated a voicing and the unrepresented a hearing'.
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