Rough Trade East In-store – SMOKE: A LONDON PECULIAR & THE BFI PRESENTS… WONDERFUL LONDON FILM SCREENING PLUS SOUNDTRACK BY SAINT ETIENNE’S BOB STANLEY – Wednesday 18th July, 7pm 18/07/2012
NO WRISTBAND NEEDED, JUST COME DOWN ON THE NIGHT
Smoke: A London Peculiar, together with the BFI, launch Wonderful London on DVD – Henry B Parkinson and Frank Miller’s breathtaking 1920s travelogues about our capital city. Travelling from Chelsea to Hackney and taking in the familiar landmarks of London town – Buckingham Palace, the River Thames, Big Ben, Tower Bridge and St Paul’s Cathedral, Wonderful London also reveals the unknown nooks and crannies and parts of London rarely filmed; the poorer, over-populated districts of Clerkenwell and Whitechapel and the original Chinatown of Pennyfields in Limehouse. There are glimpses of buildings we can no longer see on the ground; the long-gone Crystal Palace and the recently vanished gates of White City, where London’s first Olympic stadium now lies under the Westfield Shopping Centre; on a boat trip up the Thames we can see Fred Karno’s legendary ‘Karsino’. We can also take a trip through working-class London on a barge from Limehouse to Paddington Basin, via Camden and King’s Cross. By bus or tram or foot, we can observe the thronging Sunday street markets and wander down the little alleyways, past the pubs and law courts – buildings that Dickens knew. And most poignantly, we can see a past generation of Londoners going about their business, complaining about the roadworks or looking with curiosity at us through the camera lens – all gone now – but strangely like the Londoners of today.
A Live soundtrack by Saint Etienne’s Bob Stanley and Smoke: A London Peculiar editors Jude Rogers and Matt Haynes, plus talk from Bryony Dixon of the BFI.
Further details can be found here.