Next Monday we’ll be gathering for a Caught by the River Social Club, which will see London and the River Thames at the heart of the evenings proceedings. Below is a clip of William Raban’s Thames (1986) – a film that meanders with the river, taking in the surroundings of the time and observing the changes in physical and mental landscape that had occurred since 1789, when Thomas Pennant travelled and wrote about the same course.

Monday 2 February 2015

Caught by the River: Thames
London stories in words and pictures
at The Social, 5, Little Portland Street, London W1

7pm – 11pm, tickets £5 in advance. On sale here.

TALK: Tom Bolton
The author of Vanished Cities: London’s Lost Neighbourhoods in conversation with Ian Rawes of The London Sound Survey.

FILM: Today’s Special (2004)
Three short films by Paul Kelly and Saint Etienne that document a rapidly disappearing Cafe culture in London.

READING: Michael Smith
Dark Waters: a meditation on the dark poetry of the thames, as it meanders from the bright lights to the badlands of the estuary

FILM: Thames, by William Raban (1986)
‘From London Bridge to the seaward limit is a distance of 50 miles. The Thames flows eastward through a temporary landscape of docks, wharves and warehouses. Travelling on the tide in a small boat, the camera scans the Kent and Essex shores. This modern scene is interwoven with paintings, photographs and archive film which reveals a time when the river was the artery to an empire and the busiest waterway in
the world’. – W.R.