Capital Celluloid 2014 - Day 121: Fri May 2

No1: 10 Rillington Place (Fleischer, 1971): Phoenix Cinema, 11.45pm


The Phoenix plan to have monthly late-night Friday screenings, with a guest to introduce the movie. Tonight it's the choice of actor and writer Reece Shearsmith. Full details here.

Radio Times review:
In 1953, three years after Timothy Evans went to the gallows for the murder of his daughter Geraldine, John Reginald Christie, the family's landlord and a wartime special constable, was convicted at the Old Bailey of murdering his wife and was also shown to be responsible for the deaths of five other women, and, by his own admission, for the death of Mrs Evans. Although Christie denied killing the infant, Evans was found not to have killed his child in a subsequent inquiry. Based on the book by Ludovic Kennedy that helped secure Evans's posthumous pardon in 1966, Richard Fleischer's film is nowhere near as visually audacious as his Boston Strangler two years previously. But it does contain an acting tour de force from Richard Attenborough as the seedy killer, who boasted openly of his ability to perform "minor operations". Superbly re-creating the atmosphere of late-1940s London, this is a chilling study of an evil mind.
David Parkinson

Here (and above) is an extract.

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No2: Estate (Zimmerman, 2014):
The Russet, Hackney Downs Terrace, Amhurst Rd, E8


This is part of the year-long 70x70 film season. London writer, filmmaker and 'psychogeographer' Iain Sinclair celebrates his 70th birthday year, with the showing of 70 films, handpicked for their association with his work and shown in venues all over London. Here is a full list of the excellent programme, which finishes in June.

Andrea Luka Zimmerman, featured in the YouTube video above, says of 'Estate': "Featuring past and present residents of the Haggerston estate plus Ken Worpole and Jeremy Till with original songs by Olivia Chaney. Tracking the passing of Hackney’s Haggerston Estate and wider utopian principles of social housing, Estate offers an unruly celebration of extraordinary everyday humanity. As a 1930s block is bulldozed, a luxury apartment complex rises. Challenging tired stereotypes, Estate interweaves long-term observational footage with the residents’ own historical re-enactments and dramatised reveries."

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