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Squatters
To the front line of London's early 1970s' housing crisis in this angry campaign film.
Overview
This agit-prop film takes us to the front line of the early 1970s' housing crisis. Squatters challenges the Greater London Council for their failure to invest in housing, and offers information for activists about bailiffs and the law. Formed in the wake of May '68, radical film collective Cinema Action rejected the idea of the cinematic auteur and instead reimagined film production as a non-hierarchical creative practice centred on the class struggle.
Cinema Action founder Ann Guedes began the group by showing to workers and trade unionists in the UK a French film she had bought about the protests and disturbances in Paris in May '68. Cinema Action went on to make their own films about situations and issues affecting the British working class, including the Industrial Relations Bill of 1970 and the various miners' strikes of the 70s. The group's films in the 80s and 90s remained political but diversified in form and style. Squatters remains resonant in today's housing situation, particularly in London, where rents are rocketing ever upwards.
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