In the 80s, a group of residents were given cameras to document the London borough. Now, their work has come to light showing the passionate spirit of a lost era
In 2016, Andrew Woodyatt started working at the Rio cinema in Dalston, Hackney, London. Handed a large bunch of keys, and blessed with a healthy curiosity, he started to explore the Rio’s basement rooms, which had been used for years for storage. Among the broken hoovers and discarded paperwork, he started to come across negatives – local street scenes shot on film strips, which seemed interesting enough to save. Then he hit the jackpot. Opening a rusty filing cabinet, he found 10,000 frames, mounted on glass slides and neatly organised into folders, some with labels such as “NHS”, “Greenham Common” and “Colin Roach”. “I just thought ‘Wow!’” says Woodyatt, who also lectures at Goldsmiths, University of London.
Woodyatt had stumbled across the remains of the Rio Tape/Slide Newsreel Group, a project that ran at the Rio from 1982 until 1988, facilitated by a young woman called Sandra Hooper. The aim of the project was simple – to give local people audio equipment, cameras and training so they could make newsreels about their area, which would be shown at the cinema before the films. Only a couple of the newsreels have survived and none of the audio recordings, but the photographs are a thought-provoking dive into a tumultuous time in Hackney – and in Britain.
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