Tomorrow's Today

This is a picture that paints a picture, in appealing colour, of the life and times of the children of late '50s London.

This intriguing and unusual short exemplifies the BFI Experimental Film Fund’s support for the solo amateur filmmaker with creative and career ambitions. Director-photographer Henry Lewes' film studies a mural of local street life by 11-15-year-old schoolboys, using it as a basis for musings on the area, and the society, in which they’re growing up, via location footage and a thoughtful, if slightly pompous, narration. The school and the district are unnamed – if you can identify them let us know!

Lewes' patient layering of close and longer shots of the mural, and his many considered camera movements, prefigure the style of art-themed TV programmes. Evidently using this piece as a springboard, Lewes went on to a worthy but unsung career as a director of both sponsored documentaries and factual TV. Interestingly, the themes of Tomorrow’s Today - childhood and fine art - are recurring threads among these later films. See, for instance, Lewes' fine 1961 film Eyes of a Child, also available on BFI Player.