Revelations20 Launch

Islington History Centre are kindly hosting the launch of our short film, Revelations20, an intimate portrayal of the iconic Bevin Court estate, on Thursday, 11 November. Free tickets here. It’s been nearly 10 years since our first film, Every Time I Think of You, was screened at Everyman’s Screen on the Green. Celebrating 80s Islington, this also featured Bevin Court, as did its sister project, Don’t You Forget About Me, an exhibition of local photography. This, too, started its journey at the History Centre, so it is a delight to be working with them again. 

When we started making Revelations20 we knew that the aim had to be a simple and truthful representation of life on the estate: having lived here for 10 years we know it intimately. There was no need to invent or heighten the narrative because it tells its own story: council estate communities are vital and precious and, far from tearing them apart, we should be celebrating and building them up. They’re largely populated by people who know that owning land and property is less important than the people who make up those communities, who inhabit this earth!

That said, the film is definitely served sunny side up. We wanted to balance the populist portrayals of estates as hell holes, plagued by addicts and gangs. Mainstream media representations are often far removed from the reality experienced by those of us who live in them. We’re setting the record straight. 

Revelations20 was never meant to be a “lockdown film” but, inevitably, it documents that time and, as someone said recently: “I’m not sure we’re far enough away from it all to reflect back on it with any wisdom, that will take years. At the same time, that first lockdown feels like a different era.”

 Rather than a celebration or social commentary, it’s more accurate to say this film is a meditation on that era. And if Lockdown taught us anything, it was the need to pause.