Stepping into Tate Modern to take part in February’s Uniqlo Tate Late last Friday evening had us thinking back to the start of our 1000 Londoners project. It has been 5 years since we published the film portrait of Marawa, our first Londoner. As we near the 400-Londoner mark, to be invited by Tate to organise one of our largest screening events yet felt like an incredible way to kick-start 2020.
CELEBRATING LONDONERS AT TATE modern
For this Uniqlo Tate Late, Tate delved into the work of Steve McQueen and explored how artists are inspired by cities. As we are creating the largest ever documentary series about London, Tate invited us to screen our films in their Starr Cinema throughout the evening. We showed three of our curated seasons:
- ‘Windrush Generations’ explores 5 generations of Londoners with Caribbean Heritage.
- ‘Century: 10 Women x 10 Decades’ celebrates the lives of 10 unique girls and women of London aged from 8 to 94, one from each decade.
- ‘Night Crawlers’ asks the question: who are the Londoners who keep London alive at night?
We first collaborated with Tate back in 2014 when we filmed Tate’s now former Director, Nicholas Serota, and he became our Londoner #100.
At this event, we featured two more Londoners with personal links to Tate:
1. ‘Century’ featured Natalie Bell, who visitors on the night would recognise as the namesake of the Natalie Bell Building, re-christened in 2018. Our short film (coming soon) explored her reaction to this honour, and why it’s important that normal people, especially women, people of colour and those involved with local community groups, are celebrated in this way.
2. Our ‘Windrush Generations’ season also featured Yvonne, who once discovered completely by chance a striking photograph of her and her family, featured as part of the Tate’s collection.
We were excited to celebrate everyday Londoners in one of the cities biggest cultural institutions. Thank you to Tate, and to the 600 people who joined us to watch the films over the course of the evening.
Interested in taking a look at the 3 seasons we mentioned?
