This summer, UP Projects presents The Floating Cinema, Another Country; a programme of canal-side and on-board screenings, talks, performances and workshops curated in collaboration with renowned author and journalist Hari Kunzru.
UP Projects’ award winning Floating Cinema, a bespoke wide-beam barge equipped with on board cinema auditorium and outdoor projection facilities, will navigate London’s water ways to present its fifth season of screenings and expanded cinema events in a range of urban waterside locations.
Another Country takes a look at London’s place in the world and questions how we live and work within, as well as outside of, a city that throws up as many opportunities as it does challenges.
Since the EU referendum, investigating what it means to live in the UK and exploring how we might work together to find alternatives seems all the more acute. Another Country addresses the forces that are shaping us today and asks, where is our future?
All tickets booked at www.floatingcinema.info
Ghosts of Green & Pleasant Lands Weekender
King’s Cross, Granary Square 1 – 4 September
Throughout history King’s Cross has existed as a medial point between the rural and urban; a departure-point for us to explore our radical selves in the wilds of the countryside. From the spiritual hinterlands of Glastonbury to the liberation of 90’s rave culture, England’s green and pleasant lands have witnessed our reformative selves, offering up alternative ways of living and being.
Ghosts of Green and Pleasant Lands explores how we find these values within the city’s urban spaces, uncovering the green in the city and rediscovering moments of radical self-discovery through wild swimming, the euphoria of dance, food foraging and music.
Filmmaker and author of This Other London, John Rogers leads a boat tour of King’s Cross, one of London’s most mythological sites, including Pen Ton Mound and the wells and springs of Islington. Uncover stories of pleasure gardens, radicals, revolutionaries and utopias, alongside exclusive extracts from his latest film, London Overground with Iain Sinclair
Big Fish Little Fish present a canalside baby rave for little ravers and the dancing continues with a live performance from electronic post-rock outfit Szun Waves (Luke Abbott with members of PVT and Portico), followed by Ecstasy! Dancing Dusk till Dawn, a series of films inspired by the euphoria of dance, including Alex Reuben’s Routes: Dancing to New Orleans (Top 20 Films of the Decade – Geoff Andrew BFI/Time Out)
Find nature amongst the city towers as we host family-friendly workshops with the King’s Cross Skip Garden and take a dip in the cooling water of Kings Cross Pond, as artist Cathy Haynes quietens the urban rush and encourages us to reconnect with the natural markers of time.
Floating Cinema is supported by the Arts Council England, BFI, awarding funds from The National Lottery, Canal and River Trust, Film London, King’s Cross Central and Peabody Community Foundation. UP Projects are extremely grateful for the ongoing support of their partners.
Ghosts of Green and Pleasant Lands is proudly supported by The Lighterman, providing food and drink.
Highlights
Thursday 1 September
8.00pm – 10.30pm: 10-year anniversary Open Air Screening of Somers Town, Dir. Shane Meadows, 2008 (70 mins)
10 years after filming began on Somers Town, The Floating Cinema re-visits Shane Meadows’ heart-warming tale of cross-cultural friendship at the eponymous location of the film. An enchanting allegory for cosmopolitan London, Somers Town is an antidote to our turbulent times exploring London’s relationship to the rest of the world.
Price: FREE
Booking Essential.
Friday 2 September
12.30pm – 2.30pm: Green Making & Baking
An onboard and canal side workshop delivered in partnership with the King's Cross Skip Garden
Using surplus food and locally grown goods, join the King’s Cross Skip Garden for an afternoon of making and baking along with canal-side foraging to make your own afternoon tea.
Families Welcome
Price: £5 / Conc. £3.50
https://www.kingscross.co.uk/skip-garden
3.00pm – 5.00pm: Uncovering The Edgelands
Boat tour led by writer and filmmaker, John Rogers
Take a 2-hour tour on The Floating Cinema with John Rogers as he explores the myth and hidden histories of the Kings Cross canal side edgelands. A miscellany of music, film, readings and tour guide insight.
Price: £12 / Conc. £10.50
Booking Essential.
6.30pm – 8.30pm: Ebb & Flow
On-board in-conversation event with artist Cathy Haynes and UP Projects’ Assistant Curator, Lizzie Graham
Before clocks, we told time by the movement of shadows, the rising tide, the dawn chorus and the colour of light at dusk. Artist and Curator Cathy Haynes has a long-term interest in things that shape our sense of time, join her as she leads us in a collective experiment to re-engage with the duration of living processes, encouraging us to take back control of our hours in the city.
Tickets to Cathy’s talk include entry to the Kings Cross Pond for a dusk swim, the ultimate immersion in natural time.
Bring your swimming costume and a towel. Swim session runs from 7.30 – 8.30pm
Price: £13 / Conc. £11.50
8.30pm – 11.00pm: Jungle Book
With beautifully drawn animation and a joyful ‘king-of-the-swingers’ sing-a-long soundtrack, join us for a screening of this vivid and touching fable of man and nature, making Jungle Book one of Disney’s most enduring classics.
Price: FREE
Booking Essential.
Saturday 3 September
12 pm – 1.30pm: Animating nature
On board workshop with no.w.here
Stan Brakhage was a pioneer of 20th century experimental cinema, best known for his techniques of working directly onto celluloid film. Join no.w.here, for a drop in workshop. Here we will experiment with ways of making Brakhage-inspired cameraless films, using natural materials from the Kings Cross area. Take home your own celluloid strip or combine your work with others to make a collectively made 16mm nature film which we will screen at the end of the workshop.
Price: FREE
Drop-in.
2.00pm – 4.00pm: Rave On Film
On board screening of short films.
Artist film, documentary and fictional short films explore hedonistic utopias, magical music and the social context of the 90’s rave scene.
70 min rolling programme.
Price: FREE
1.00pm – 6.00pm: Canaltopia
As the summer sun fades and we kick-start September, join us for an afternoon of interactive activities animating the Granary Square steps, which nod to very British cultural history of summer festivals.
Price: FREE
Drop-in.
6.30pm – 8.00pm: Rave on the Road
On board in conversation event with photographers Molly MacIndoe and Tom Hunter
In 1995 photographer Tom Hunter left his squat in London Fields and founded ‘Le Crowbar Café’, a vegetarian café that followed a thriving transitory rave scene across Europe and not long after, Molly MacIndoe began documenting the scene. The resultant work, takes us from the derelict industrial estates of London to Teknivals in the fields and forests of Eastern Europe, providing a celebratory perspective on a subculture much-maligned by the media.
Join them for a discussion on utopian spaces, documenting your friends, and rave’s place in the nostalgia and appropriation of 90s culture.
Price: £10 / Conc. £8.50
Booking Essential
8.30pm – 10.30pm: Open Air Screening of Glastopia, Dir. Julien Temple
75 mins
Up on the hill at Glastonbury, high above Babylon and the Pyramid stage with its litter overload and mainstream acts, another kind of experience takes place. In fields known as Shangri La, Arcadia, the Unfair Ground, Strummerville, Block 9 and the Common, an unlikely attempt at Utopia takes shape. Fuelled by the sights, sounds and music of tomorrow and the insights of the past, Glastopia is thrilling and provocative entertainment for the crossroads of today.
Price: FREE
Booking Essential.
Sunday 4 September
2pm – 4pm: Open Air Baby Rave with Big Fish Little Fish
Canal side party for all the family.
Will Nicol (Northern Soul Rave Patrol) DJs music spanning the era and tips his hat to crews from Exodus to Spiral Tribe. Throw some shapes with your kids on the canalside steps with bouncing giant balloons and a giant parachute on the BFLF multisensory dance floor. Take a breather with your glow sticks and join Captain Cookie and her kids’ craft activities - cover yourself in temporary tattoos, colour in a giant mural and make dance floor accessories.
All ages welcome but activities are designed specifically for 0-8 year olds.
Price: £5
4.30 – 7.00pm: Rave On Film
On board shorts programme
On board screening of short films.
Artist film, documentary and fictional short films explore hedonistic utopias, magical music and the social context of the 90’s rave scene. 70 min rolling programme.
Price: FREE
8.30pm – 9.30pm: Live Open Air performance from shimmering electronic psychedelic trio, Szun Waves.
Szun Waves is the newly-formed experimental psychedelic trio comprised of electronic producer Luke Abbott, Laurence Pike of PVT and Jack Wyllie of Mercury Music Prize nominated, Portico.
9:30pm – 10.45pm: ECSTACY! Dancing Dusk till Dawn
A programme of short films that celebrate the euphoria of losing yourself to dance
Price: FREE
Coming Up
Following World Cities and Ghosts of Green and Present Lands, The Floating Cinema will be moored in Mile End Park from 23 to 25 September, for Swarming the Castle, a weekend that puts women at the centre of our previously stale and polarized conversations about religion, identity and Britishness. Disrupting these conversations with a new dialogue between one kind of feminist rebellion and another.
