Although he might be known to us as a mate and also the designer of both the hardback Words on Water and last year’s Matt Sewell calendar, Paul Kelly is more famously known as an inspired filmmaker. Co-director of Finisterre and dogged documentarian behind the Lawrence film (Lawrence of Belgravia), Paul is currently putting the finishing touches to a new film. How We Used To Live, a collaboration with Saint Etienne, has been put together from archive material owned by the BFI. It’s an incredibly beautiful piece of work that’s due to screen in the London Film Festival next month. Click on to read a few words on the film from Saint Etienne and watch the trailer.
“We’re incredibly proud that our latest film collaboration with Paul Kelly, How We Used To Live, has been selected to be shown at this year’s London Film Festival. The footage is all from the BFI national archive, much it unseen for decades, shot between the fifties and the eighties, from the ‘New Elizabethan’ age and the optimism of the post-war era to the dawn of Thatcherism. It has been described as a prequel to Finisterre, which isn’t a million miles from the truth – it does sometimes look as if Paul had got into a Tardis with a 16mm camera. Stuart Brown from the NFT has described it as “…alluringly impressionistic, poetic and political, this is the most joyful and entertaining offering yet from a unique filmmaking collective.”
“How We Used To Live has a brand new soundtrack written by Pete, with Sarah providing some gorgeous Swingle-y harmonies, while Bob and our sometime sleevenote writer Travis Elborough have written the script. The narrator is a ‘special guest’ – bit of a secret at the moment. BFI members can buy tickets now, they go on sale to non-members from Friday September 20th September here. The premiere will be on Saturday October 12th at that snazzy bit of concrete called the Renoir, in the Brunswick Centre; it also gets a second festival screening at NFT3 on Monday October 14th. And if you fancy seeing our first ever film collaboration, Finisterre is part of the Urban Wandering season at the Barbican a week on Saturday – see here for more details here. See you at the Renoir. Love Sarah, Bob and Pete xxx”