Lower Street: A Night Journey

Commissioned by Tintype for Essex Road III (see below, Exhibitions).

Synopsis:
Formerly known as Lower Street, Essex Road holds much of the last traces of Islington's more diverse, deprived and communal social origins. In a dark, hunger-fueled progress along the street, Ella the pilgrim hound of dispossession encounters well-intentioned offers (of finance, flesh and intoxication) from those like her in their outcast status, as well as threat (from a dogcatcher and a terrifying glimpse of a possible hollow future) in her search for nourishment. Resisting and enduring, it appears that she has found the food she craves in a twilit glade. But is she truly clear of danger and the darkerforces at work in society?

Director statement:
Lower Street: A Night Journey is about life in the shadows, survival, the gentle in a gesture that could turn to danger in a beat, but also a critique of simplistic characterisation. Simone Weil said the biggest gift is that of attention, and Ella, the former (actual) stray, with whom we travel along the Essex Road, shows us the night creatures (human and otherwise) in unexpected ways. It is also a film about the paradox of the forbidden, and how what nurtures one may sacrifice another.

Film / Andrea Luka Zimmerman
Text / Gareth Evans
Tattoo / Lijana Jakovlevna Siuchina
Sound / Adam Paroussos
Participants / Louis Benassi / Ella / Steve Hart / Therese Henningsen / Ice / Hazel Karatas / Kervan Karatas / Tom Sangster / Lijana Jakovlevna Siuchina

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Exhibitions:

Tintype Gallery
Essex Road III (9th Dec 2016 - 14th January 2017)
Essex Road III Susan Collins, Lynne Marsh, Jennet Thomas, Amikam Toren, John Walter, Alice May Williams, Joby Williamson, Andrea Luka Zimmerman
Tintype’s Essex Road invites eight artists to each make a short film connected to the mile-long north London street.The gallery window, on a busy corner in Essex Road, becomes a public screen for six weeks over Christmas and New Year. The films are back-projected into the window on a loop from dusk until late.

Museum of London
Mayor summer show "London Nights" (25th May - 11th November, 2018)
The exhibition hosts photographs and moving image about London through history at night.
‘London Nights’ is the accompanying exhibition book to the Museum of London’s new photography exhibition. Featuring a collection of historic and contemporary images from over 60 photographers, including Bob Collins, Rut Bless Luxemburg and Bill Brandt, over a vast range of genres.
The book contains essays by Museum of London’s Curator of Photographs, Anna Sparham and specially commissioned poetry by award-winning poet and playwright Inua Ellams. Hardback with cloth spine. 208pp. Museum of London. Hoxton Mini Press, ISBN: 978-1-910566-34-3