Towards Estate

Towards Estate is a short film assembled from the diverse elements of the long term production of the Estate feature project, edited in its own terms concisely to relate several of the narratives of Haggerston estate, historically and in the present.

Capturing a moment of imminent transition, Towards Estate (15min, 2012) and its feature-length successor Estate: a Reverie (100 mins, 2014) reflect on urgent matters of regeneration, gentrification and architecture; its reasons, possibilities and consequences. But more importantly, they are films about time and place, and the ability of hold forms of dreaming and the capacity for wonder within ongoing and growing daily systemic pressures. During this moment of transition (in social and architectural terms), where one structure has broken down, and a new one is about to emerge, another space unfolds; a space of proposals, of uncertainty, and of absolute initiative. In this opening, how might we ask important questions of our ideas of home, of history, always in the making, and of our capacity for an ambition of the imagination in straitened times; that which influences not only how we’re seen, but also how we see; how we dream…

Tracking the passing of Hackney's Haggerston Estate and wider utopian principles of social housing, Estate offers an unruly celebration of extraordinary everyday humanity. As a 1930s block is bulldozed, a luxury-apartment-complex rises. Challenging tired stereotypes, Estate interweaves intimate long-term observational footage with the residents' own historical re-enactments and dramatised reveries.