E1 Festival 1st Community Meeting
1/2 inch open-reel videotape Black & White Sound 1974 33:20
Summary: A black-and-white handheld recording of the first 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: 21151
LSA ID: LSA/27847
Description: In this video, the camera shakily roves across the rectangular meeting table in a large public meeting room where around ten white members, predominantly men and around three women, are smoking, drinking beer and discussing the priorities for the next iteration of the E1 Festival. The camera zooms in on individual members as they speak, sometimes fuzzing out and dropping down to the floor. The camera pans to a baby in a pram in the meeting room. One of the women raises the issue of how to film the community meetings, edit them for clarity and make them accessible to the community. The discussions return to the issue of keeping the festival local and community-centred against other more commercial street festivals.
The film captures the passionate planning discussion for the next E1 Festival. At one point, the video cuts to a man drinking a beer, in side-profile, speaking slightly inaudibly and effusively about how the members have revived the spirit of the East End. The camera then cuts back to the meeting where we hear various members discuss how to dedicate resources, employ members of the communities, and how to keep members working on the festival consistently against other commitments. There is a heated moment of dispute between a man in a V-neck knit cardigan and other committee members, as the festival expands away from its initial aim of raising funds for the E1 Football League. The camera cuts out in-media res as a bespectacled man speaks about the need to recognise competing priorities for the festival.
Credits: Basement Project (Producer)
Locations: Stepney, Shadwell, Wapping
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