E1 Festival Last Meeting
1/2 inch open-reel videotape Black & White Sound 1974 32:25
Summary: A black-and-white handheld recording of the final E1 Festival community meeting held in 1974 in East London, filmed as part of the Basement Project. The E1 Festival was a community run event that took place throughout the 1970s on vacant land in Stepney, East London. Originally set up to raise money for the Junior Football League, it was a weekend long event of music, performing arts, stalls, and activities for people of all ages.
Title number: 21163
LSA ID: LSA/27859
Description: The video begins with blurry close-ups of walls with posters, against the sound of children’s songs, before cutting away to a TV playing a football game. Static ensues. Within the next part of the video, we see a meeting room with around 20 white men and women, two older men sat at a table, and others sat haphazardly around the room, on the floor, on stools, or standing. The initial discussion examines the timing and production of the festival – the order of the procession, against the football match. Multiple people hunch over a large paper map and planner and discuss the running order schedule for the festival. Then, a man discusses stall partners – listing off the Tower Hamlets school, Phoenix school, Stepney Green school among others.
The longer discussion in the middle of the film is concerned with the E1 Festival Certificate’s controversial design. Many are worried that it could offend certain groups, as one man insists that the E1 Festival is not a political affair and is about community. The camera zooms in on an illustration of a rifle on the certificate design. It is agreed between the group that the certificate will be redesigned. The final part of the meeting concerns E1 merch and T-shirt sales, as they discuss whether to buy more T-shirts to sell.
Credits: Basement Project (Producer)
Keywords: community; Meeting; E1 Festival
Locations: ?
Related
Comments