The London Festival of Architecture (LFA) 2023 has launched a cinema in a disused space in Brixton for June, running a programme of films celebrating Brixton’s rich history and cultural heritage.
‘Views on the Atlantic’, from Brixton Community Cinema with Bamidele Awoyemi, Farouk Agoro and Livia Wang, forms a series of cinema installations at Atlantic Road and Windrush Square. Throughout LFA2023 the sites will be used as places for evening cinema screenings, exhibitions, and other programme activities; during the day, both sites will be places for ‘gathering, education and artistic expression’, along with a series of learning workshops.
The transformation of the public space allows for a cinema screening programme running throughout June, with displays of archival photography and film gathered from local organisations and archives such as Lambeth Archives, Ritzy Cinema and Black Cultural Archives. The interventions will also have a varied input from local creatives and international community cinemas.
Programme
The film programme is curated collectively with a variety of individuals and collectives working at the intersection of culture and social justice. They were asked to choose a film they would like to share with the public with this year’s LFA theme of ‘In Common’ in mind.
Events will be programmed by South London based groups such as Pan-Asian arts collective Baesianz, and curatorial duo Languid Hands, as well as collaborators from north of the river such as The Mosaic Rooms: a non-profit art gallery and bookshop. These are complemented by films selected by cinema clubs and organisations across the world, from Brooklyn’s Alfreda’s Cinema, to Archives DZ which works to digitalise Algeria’s film archives, to Ciné-Archives, the extensive moving image collection of the French Communist Party. Also invited are groups doing pioneering work with and around architecture and the built environment, such as Paris-based publication The Funambulist, and Goldsmith’s Centre for Research Architecture. The Brixton Community Cinema team and designers behind bafalw will also be hosting film nights, with additional proposals picked from an open call for Lambeth residents.
On weekends during the daytime, local arts organisations such as The Stuart Hall Library, Em—Dash Press, and Prajñā Bookshop will take over the space presenting a pop-up library of their archives for the public to browse.
