The Houseless Shadow

The Houseless Shadow explores the continuities between London’s nocturnal life as it is now, compared with how it was observed 150 years ago.

The essay Night Walks (1859) by Charles Dickens gives voice to the film; using the text to explore continuities between London’s nocturnal life as it is today, compared with how it was observed 150 years ago. Making the film was a process of retracing Dickens’s footsteps. Iconic landmarks evoke speculative thoughts about the penal system, liminal distinctions between sanity and madness and the hordes of London’s dead.

There are striking differences from Dickens’s account of mid Victorian London, though some things remain remarkably consistent, such as when ‘the potmen thrust the last brawling drunkards onto the street'. What would Dickens’s keen eye for social inequality have made of the growing numbers of houseless on the streets of this otherwise glittering cosmopilitan city?

Commissioned by the Museum of London for Dickens and London Exhibition (9 December 2011 - 10 June 2012)

Reviews:

'Tales of One City', John Bowen, Times Higher Education, 08/12/11: http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=26&storycode=418391&c=2

'Doting on Charles Dickens', David Sexton, Evening Standard, 06.12.11:
http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/lifestyle/book/article-24018244-doting-on-charles-dickens-returning-to-his-own-words-in-his-bicentenary.do

• http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/st...
• http://www.museumoflondon.org.uk/London-...
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SlPPgmPPE...
• http://blog.museumoflondon.org.uk/is-voi...