• Tuesday 29th November 2011, 6:00PM
• Norbert Singer Lecture Theatre, Avery Hill, Mansion Site

A film preserving memories of the Lower Lea Valley before it was transformed by the 2012 Olympics; shot and scored by film director Paul Kelly and pop group Saint Etienne it is both a paean to this part of East London and an invaluable historical record of a place that no longer exists.

‘We [St Etienne] started filming thinking, like everyone else, that the bid would almost certainly fail, and that we were celebrating a neglected place, a part of east London that had somehow missed out on investment and redevelopment every time, that had been overlooked since Victorian times. Now it’s literally disappearing bit by bit, week by week.’ Observer Oct. 2005,

Or you might say that the future has finally arrived in Hackney Wick.

The film is a follow up to “Finisterre”, Saint Etienne’s acclaimed cinematic hymn to London.

The London that they love is quickly disappearing, endangered by the onward rush of cultural and commercial homogenisation, the tyranny of the chain store and the coffee bar franchise.