London Perambulator

I attended my brothers screening of the London Perambulator on Wednesday night at the Whitechapel Art Gallery (part of the East End Film Festival). The London Perambulator is a documentary about our relationship with the edgelands of the city, the under-imagined liminal spaces at the fringe of London. This is the city that we deny, overlook, malign. But it is in these spaces that we find the key to the true soul of the city, it’s past and it’s future. (www.nationalpsychogeographic.com). I see the film as essentially a portrait of a guy called Nick Papadimitriou who walks the 'liminal spaces' of London and is obsessed by water courses and mogden purification works. We see him in his own archive in his flat, to wandering the alleys and streets around north west London. Wilf Self, Ian Sinclair and Russell Brand all offer their own stories about Nick and their associations with him. This film is loosely based on pyschogeography although Nick hates this term and has coined his own 'Deep Topography' which Sinclair has openly admitted that he's now adopted. Some interesting comments were brought up about linking geography and time and at the end of the film Nick declares that all he could ever really hope for is that when he dies, he becomes Middlesex; his corporeal being melting and becoming one with the landscape.

Johnny and I started on our explorations of place back in 2004 with a project in High Wycombe, called 'Remapping High Wycombe' (there's a link further down under collaborations). Sitting in the auditiorum in 2009 watching a touching portrait of a man who embodies everything we ever wanted to say about how place can affect a human being I'm really proud of him. It's through his passion, tenacity, down right hard work and perseverance that he's produced this beautiful little film.