Film
Library-in-Residence

Library Transmission: Tunde's Film

Tunde Ikoli, Maggie Pinhorn, James Elsey and The Otolith Collective

Date and Time:: Thursday 23 Apr, 6–8pm
Location:: Minassa

This screening of Tunde's Film is the first event in the Notes from the London Commune series.

The evening will continue with an in-conversation with film directors Tunde Ikoli and Maggie Pinhorn, series curator James Elsey, and The Otolith Collective's Anjalika Sagar and Kodwo Eshun.

Tunde’s Film follows a group of youths in East London who decide to take matters into their own hands after economic turmoil and persistent police harassment. They form an armed cadre whose first objective is to rob a bank. The drama unfolds on the streets of Tower Hamlets as the racial and social faultlines of 1970s London are set to a Joan Armatrading soundtrack.

Notes from the London Commune highlights moments from the pre-history of the liberation of London. The programme envisions the political imagination of black, proletarian, queer radicalisms as the seed, the soil and the star of a London yet to arrive.

Each event presents a retrospective look at the histories of struggle in the city, from the vantage point of a near-future establishment of London's citywide workers' council. Each study session is hosted by a guest that brings selected texts from the Otolith Library into dialogue with Eman Abdelhadi and M.E. O'Brien's Everything for Everyone: An Oral History of the New York Commune, 2052-2072, and Peter Watkins' La Commune (Paris, 1871).

Doors open at 5.30pm; event starts at 6pm and ends at 8pm.

Image credit: Still from Tunde's Film, 1973. London Community Video Archive.

The Otolith Collective is supported using public funding by Arts Council England.

Tunde Ikoli was born in London’s East End to a Cornish mother and a Nigerian father. After leaving school at 15 he spent two years as a trainee tailor’s cutter, before writing and co-directing Tunde’s Film shown at the London, Edinburgh, Mannheim and San Francisco film festivals. The film led to a job at the Royal Court Theatre as Assistant Director where his productions included Mustapha Matura’s Play Mas. His first play Short Sleeves in Summer was produced at the Royal Court Theatre in 1974. Since 1977 Ikoli’s plays have been produced at a number of theatres including Bush Theatre, Riverside Studios, Theatre Royal Stratford East, and the Tricycle Theatre.

Maggie Pinhorn began her career in the art departments at Pinewood and Shepperton Film Studios, working on major feature films. In the early 1970s she founded Alternative Arts, establishing Street Theatre in Covent Garden and the Basement Film Project in Stepney. There, she worked with young people to create their first film, written by Tunde Ikoli and known as Tunde’s Film. The production received critical acclaim and was screened at the London, Edinburgh and Mannheim Film Festivals. The group were later invited to produce an Open Door programme for the BBC’s Community Programme Unit, titled East End Channel One. Alternative Arts has since delivered a wide range of projects, including community festivals across East London, Alternative Fashion Week, the Alternative Art Market in Spitalfields, and Photomonth East London. The organisation has also supported exhibitions for Black History Month. Each March, it coordinates Women’s History Month in East London, showcasing artists, activists, writers and performers across the city.

James Elsey is a writer and activist currently working towards a doctoral project at the London School of Film, Media and Design at the University of West London. Elsey works mostly with text, radio and events to unfurl thinking across the continuum between political urgencies and speculative circuitries.

The Otolith Collective is a long-standing artist led organisation supporting intergenerational and intragenerational art practices, research-led projects, writing and process-based forms of development. They create environments that nourish discourse and discussion, co-commission artists, and curate exhibitions and programmes with a wide range of collaborators, organisations and institutions here and elsewhere. Theirs is an international project based on transnational and translocal vision who are committed to maintaining and animating an experimental and worldmaking approach. Performing across disciplines such as visual art, performance, new music, film and video, new technology and critical writing, we draw a diverse range of audiences. The OC has curated seminal exhibitions and platforms on the work of figures such as Black Audio Film Collective, Mark Fisher, Harun Farocki, Bahar Noorizadeh, The Chimurenga Library, Chris Marker, to name but a few.