Under the cranes: literature, film and the city

Film screening and discussion of the LSE Cities Literary Festival series hosted by LSE Cities

Emma-Louise William’s film, Under the Cranes (2011), is based on the documentary play for voices, Hackney Streets, by poet and former Children’s Laureate, Michael Rosen. Blending rare archive footage and dreamlike sequences of present-day Hackney, Williams managed to link the everyday with the social and literary history of this dynamic and culturally diverse East London borough.

Following the screening, a panel of guests joined Williams and Rosen to discuss the hybridity of literature and film, as well as Hackney and the increasing attention it has received in light of the 2012 Olympics and controversial redevelopment projects.

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Profiles

    Michael Rosen

    Michael Rosen was born in 1946 in north London. He has been writing, performing, broadcasting and lecturing since the early 70s. He co-devised and co-teaches a Masters course at Birkbeck College, University of London.

    Emma-Louise Williams

    Emma-Louise Williams is a radio producer and first-time film-maker. She is currently making a radio documentary for BBC Radio 4 about unaccompanied, asylum-seeking children and young people in East London. Her work seeks to counter the prevailing perception of the inner city as a site of failure, ugliness and misdeed through a ‘socio-poetics’ of everyday life.

    Patrick Hazard

    Founder and director of the London International Documentary Festival.