Acre After Acre, Mile After Mile is a guided walk and film screening that investigates the short film history of the Isle of Dogs.Â
In BAFTA-award winning documentary A Portrait of Queenie (1963), we see the area as it was going through major changes, the decline of the docks evident but community spirit still in full swing. The film is told through the eyes of local celebrity Queenie Watts; a landlord of two Island pubs, a jazz singer and film and television actress (Sparrows Can’t Sing, Poor Cow, Up The Junction, Holiday on the Buses, Steptoe & Son, Dad’s Army) in the 60s and 70s.Â
In the 90s, British filmmakers Andrew Kotting, Derek Jarman, Alison Murray, Simon Faithfull and Matthew McGuchan used the desolation of the abandoned docklands as inspiration, the surreal derelict landscapes as a backdrop. The Brutalist estate Robin Hood Gardens in Blackwall is immortalised before its demolition in Martin Ginestie’s documentary.
The screening will be preceded by a social history walk led by Nigel Smith and will be followed by a Q&A by some of the filmmakers screening, alongside local history expert, Con Maloney, a 5th-generation Islander from a family of Millwall Dock stevedores, a Friends of Island History Trust committee member and author of their first publication Boozers & Bompers & Bridgers about the Island’s historic public houses.Â
The Space bar will be open for refreshments between the end of the walk and the start of the screening.
Clicking through to the Booking link will allow you to buy the walk and screening together, or just the screening.
