Category Archives: Arts Event

6 September 2023 18:30 ~ Breaking Ground: the story fo the London Irish Women’s Centre + Live Q&A – Rio x Peer x Club des Femmes present Hackney’s feminisms in the 1980s – London

Want to find more about the radical feminist connections, struggles and politics that constellated around Centerprise, the Rio, Lenthall Road Workshop and the London Irish Women’s Centre in the 1980s, and hear from some of the women who were there at the time?

Join us as we recover Hackney’s feminist and LGBTQ cultural activisms and campaigns that shaped community, politicised a generation of women and changed lives. Come with your memories, memorabilia and questions as we remember Hackney’s feminist pasts to collectively imagine a queer feminist future.

Film programme:

Feminist Re-Imaginings at the Rio, 1980-2020

  • Selina Robertson, UK, 2022, 11mins

A tape/slide honouring the Rio’s feminist film pasts.

Breaking Ground 

Artist and filmmaker Michelle Deignan tells the one part of this story in her brilliant documentary Breaking Ground on the London Irish Women’s Centre, a radical organisation founded to support generations of Irish women in London. The film does more than just recount the story of the Centre in Stoke Newington from its origins in the 1980s to its closure in 2012. It is a creative fusion of montage, archive and oral history that greatly contributes to our understanding of radical feminism, national identity and sexual politics during this period. Made by an all women crew, the film combines captivating and candid archive footage filmed in London over 30 years, with thoughtful and provocative accounts from some of the amazing women who were part of the women’s movement in the city during that time.

  • live Q&A with Michelle Deignan, Vicky Grut, Annette Kennerley and viv acious.

This screening has been organised conjunction with Peer’s current exhibition ‘we are a group of people composed of who we are’. 23 June-9 September 2023.

https://www.peeruk.org/we-are-a-group-of-people

Book tickets:

August 31, 2023

6 September 2023 18:30 ~ Breaking Ground: the story fo the London Irish Women’s Centre + Live Q&A – Rio x Peer x Club des Femmes present Hackney’s feminisms in the 1980s – London

Want to find more about the radical feminist connections, struggles and politics that constellated around Centerprise, the Rio, Lenthall Road Workshop and the London Irish Women’s Centre in the 1980s, and hear from some of the women who were there at the time?

Join us as we recover Hackney’s feminist and LGBTQ cultural activisms and campaigns that shaped community, politicised a generation of women and changed lives. Come with your memories, memorabilia and questions as we remember Hackney’s feminist pasts to collectively imagine a queer feminist future.

Film programme:

Feminist Re-Imaginings at the Rio, 1980-2020

  • Selina Robertson, UK, 2022, 11mins

A tape/slide honouring the Rio’s feminist film pasts.

Breaking Ground 

Artist and filmmaker Michelle Deignan tells the one part of this story in her brilliant documentary Breaking Ground on the London Irish Women’s Centre, a radical organisation founded to support generations of Irish women in London. The film does more than just recount the story of the Centre in Stoke Newington from its origins in the 1980s to its closure in 2012. It is a creative fusion of montage, archive and oral history that greatly contributes to our understanding of radical feminism, national identity and sexual politics during this period. Made by an all women crew, the film combines captivating and candid archive footage filmed in London over 30 years, with thoughtful and provocative accounts from some of the amazing women who were part of the women’s movement in the city during that time.

  • live Q&A with Michelle Deignan, Vicky Grut, Annette Kennerley and viv acious.

This screening has been organised conjunction with Peer’s current exhibition ‘we are a group of people composed of who we are’. 23 June-9 September 2023.

https://www.peeruk.org/we-are-a-group-of-people

Book tickets:

August 31, 2023

9 August 2022 18:00 ~ Celebrating South African Women’s Day – The Liliesleaf Trust UK – London

Join us for an evening of film, exhibitions and discussion inspired by the themes of South African Women’s Day

To mark South African Women’s Day 2022, The Liliesleaf Trust UK, joined by artist Nefateri, are screening the ground-breaking film “Murder in Paris”, an investigative documentary that traces the motives for the assassination of Anti-Apartheid activist Dulcie September.

Our commissioned artist, Nefateri Asantewa, will be exhibiting and talking about her work “South African Flag“, which gives reference to the over 20 000 women who took part in the 1956 Women’s March to Pretoria, South Africa, celebrating their resilience and contribution to the struggle against apartheid and provokes thinking about ongoing inequalities.

During the evening attendees will also be able to view the exhibition, Pride Belongs to the People: Images of Soweto Pride on display at Newington Green Meeting House, held as part of The Culthouse’s Pop Up Shop supported by The Leverhulme Trust and the School of Social Sciences at the University of Westminster.

The audience will be invited to participate in a conversation on the role and impact of women in the fight against apartheid. Together, we will explore the stories, histories and voices of former generations to inspire future ones.

  • Free (*)
  • 6-8 pm
  • Newington Green Meeting House, 39A Newington Green, N16 9PR
  • Nearest station : Canonbury overground station
  • Local buses from Finsbury Park Station

Click here to visit the Murder In Paris official website.

The Organisers

The Liliesleaf Trust UK is a registered charity, established in 2018, dedicated to engagement with the heritage and values of the Southern African liberation struggle, international solidarity with the cause and in particular the activities of South(ern) Africans exiled in the UK, the British Anti-Apartheid movement (AAM) and the wider movement against apartheid (MAA) and, most importantly, the contemporary relevance of these narratives.

Drawing from this world-changing history, we promote solidarity, social justice, equality, human rights, reconciliation, and anti-racism to encourage positive action for diverse contemporary communities through arts, cultural and educational programming. We facilitate engaging with the struggle’s heritage to support intergenerational community cohesion, skills development and aspiration to underpin positive social transformation.

We are working to redevelop 28 Penton Street, Islington, the African National Congress-in-exile’s former UK headquarters into the Anti-Apartheid Legacy: Centre of Memory and Learning (CML). The CML will become the first permanent UK venue to make accessible the heritage of the MAA, channelling the legacy of one of the most influential, Black-led social justice movements of the 20th Century and solidarity with the cause.

(*) Register online at https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/celebrating-south-african-womens-day-tickets-390497798427

August 4, 2022

15 October 2021 10:00 ~ Images of Liberation: Sally Fraser’s photography of women’s protest – Photo Oxford Festival – Oxford – until 15 November 2021

  • 15 October – 15 November 2021, Open daily 10am – 4pm
  • Cohen Quad, Exeter College, Oxford OX1 2HG

Meet the curators and some participants in the 1970 Women’s Liberation Conference on Friday 15 October, 2-4pm

Striking images from photographer-on-the-ground Sally Fraser capture the fiery beginnings of second wave feminism in Britain. On show as part of Photo Oxford, ‘Images of Liberation’ reveals a hitherto unseen portrait of the first Women’s Liberation Conference and landmark equal rights demonstration that followed. Exhibited at Cohen Quad, part of Exeter (formerly Ruskin) College – the site of this groundbreaking historical moment – the photographs return to the place they were taken, over 50 years ago.

28 October: Online discussion event – details on Festival Events page soon. https://www.photooxford.org/whats-on/events

Never before-seen images capture the fiery beginnings of the UK women’s liberation movement in a new exhibition of work by activist photographer Sally Fraser.

On a snowy International Women’s Day in 1971, 4,000 people marched through central London. Inspired by the founding Women’s Liberation Conference held in Oxford the previous year, this was the first-ever national demonstration for equal rights and pay for women.

The early history of this movement is celebrated in a fascinating exhibition of photographs by Sally Fraser, who both documented and participated in the protests. Images of Liberation: Sally Fraser’s photography of women’s protest runs as part of Photo Oxford 2021. It will be shown at the site of Ruskin (now Exeter) College, where the founding conference took place in February 1970.

Sally Fraser’s images capture the genesis of second wave feminism in Britain, at a landmark conference in Oxford and on the capital’s streets, a half-century ago. The conference attendees include, among others, leading feminist thinkers and activists Sally Alexander, Sue Crockford, Anna Davin, Annie Freud, Selma James, Juliet Mitchell, Sheila Rowbotham, Michelene Wandor and Audrey Wise, later MP for Coventry South West. The conference creche, run by fathers, shows a youthful Stuart Hall holding a baby. Busts of ‘great men’ in the Oxford Union are humorously covered by scarves, paper bags and banana skins. This subversive creativity is further seen on the Women’s March, where women are dressed for a satirical beauty pageant, and a crucified shop dummy is held aloft, draped with articles of women’s oppression.

The exhibition provides an invaluable record of a key moment in 20th century British radical social history, the launch pad of what Sheila Rowbotham envisaged as ‘an entirely new kind of politics’.

For full details scroll down https://www.photooxford.org/whats-on/exhibitions

 

October 13, 2021

18 February 2021 18:00 ~ LGBT+ History Month 2021: Angela Bowen + The Watermelon Woman + Q&A – Newham Community Cinema – Online

LADIES WHO LOVE season takes a look through time at the romantic bonds between couples that identify and/or relate as women.

Newham Community Cinema presents an online month-long celebration of LGBT+ culture on film with curated conversations and special guests brought to you free by Newham Council and in partnership with Women Over Fifty Film Festival (WOFFF).

SHORT – THE PASSIONATE PURSUITS OF ANGELA BOWEN

  • Jennifer Abod | USA | 2018 | Documentary | 25mins
  • A portrait of Angela Bowen from inner cities streets of Boston, to founder of Connecticut’s beloved Bowen-Peters School of Dance, to Black lesbian feminist activist, to distinguished writer and professor.

FEATURE – THE WATERMELON WOMAN

  • Cheryl Dunye | US | 18 | 1996 | Drama | 85mins
  • ‘The Watermelon Woman’ was the name given to the mythical Fae Richards, a beautiful yet elusive Black actress from the 1930s. In all her films, it was her only billing, why should that be? It is a mystery that perplexes Cheryl (Cheryl Dunye), a young Black filmmaker. She sets out to solve the mystery by making a documentary about this forgotten star.
  • (Courtesy of Peccadillo Pictures)

About the Q&A/Panel

  • Nuala O’Sullivan (Host) – Founder of Women Over Fifty Film Festival (WOFFF) – a celebration of older women in front of and behind the camera. She has written plays for theatre and has been a series writer for the BBC Radio 4 drama Brief Lives. She launched Women Over 50 Film Festival as a positive and practical response to this lack of visibility so that older women in film would have a platform dedicated to them and their work.
  • Jennifer Abod (Guest) – Director of THE PASSIONATE PURSUITS OF ANGELA BOWEN is an American filmmaker, activist, musician, journalist, poet and filmmaker. In 1970 she co-wrote “The Liberation of Lydia,” the first feminist radio soap opera as well as co-founding the women’s liberation rock band Papa Don’t Lay that Shit on Me. She was a radio broadcaster for 19 years and released her first documentary “The Edge of Each Other’s Battles: The Vision of Audre Lorde” in 2002.

Running Order

6pm: Film Starts (Suggested viewing time)

  • Participants will receive a link to watch the films after registering that will be available for 24hrs before the Q&A/Panel.

8pm: Live Q&A Panel starts with a host and special guests (Fixed viewing time)

  • Participants will receive a link to watch the Q&A/Panel after registering and before the live event along with the links for the virtual screenings.

9pm: Event Ends (Book your next event now! Limited spaces!)

Book online at https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/lgbt-history-month-2021-angela-bowen-the-watermelon-woman-qa-tickets-140561909455?aff=ebdsoporgprofile

February 17, 2021