Concrete Heart Land
Film Screening and Directors Talk
Friday May 29, 4pm-6pm
Wilson Road Lecture Theatre, Camberwell College
1 Wilson Road, London, SE5 8LU
Speakers: Steven Ball & Rastko Novaković
Steven Ball’s audio-visual media practice is engaged with landscape and spatial representation, in local and global, social, political and post-colonial spheres. He is a Research Fellow at Central Saint Martins, a member of the post-punk DIY group Storm Bugs, and also occasionally writes and curates.
www.steven-ball.net
Rastko Novaković has made over 40 moving image works, from one minute to feature-length videos, panoramas, open-air cinemas, documentaries, lyrical films, campaigning videos, documented performances, interventions in histories and spaces. He spends most of his time as a shop steward at his workplace and in community housing struggles.
www.rastko.co.uk
Concrete Heart Land exposes the social cleansing of the Heygate Estate in Elephant and Castle, South London. It marks the moment that the estate was finally lost as social housing to make way for an unjust 'regeneration' scheme.
Assembled from 12 years of archive materials the film charts the struggles of the local community to keep their homes, stay living in the area, and maintain communal benefits in the face of the advance of this now notorious 'urban redevelopment programme'. Throughout the film we hear the community engaging in some of the crucial battles with elected officials, planners, and barristers in municipal planning meetings, public enquiries, and interviews.
Weaving through these recordings is a performance staged in 2012 on the then still inhabited estate. An assembled group of past and present residents, community activists, and critics of the Heygate plans chant texts composed from phrases used in the Regeneration Masterplan. The performances parody the technical language of regeneration and the aspirational language of gentrification.
Over the course of 2012 and 2013 we filmed panoramic video images of the estate and interiors of some of the Heygate flats, all of which feature in the film.
Having evicted the last residents in November 2013, Southwark Council and the developer Lend Lease are currently working towards the wider gentrification of the area.
As of 31 January 2015, the Heygate's now partly-emptied neighbour the Aylesbury Estate has been occupied in protest against the continuing gentrification. See the Concrete Heartland page for links to Fight for the Aylesbury occupation and other local housing campaigns.