WED 6 SEP 2023 @ 6:30pm
Rio Cinema, Dalston
Tickets: £5
Want to find more about the radical feminist connections, struggles and politics that constellated around Centerprise, the Rio, Lenthall Road Workshop and the London Irish Women’s Centre in the 1980s, and hear from some of the women who were there at the time? Join us as we recover Hackney’s feminist and LGBTQ cultural activisms and campaigns that shaped community, politicised a generation of women and changed lives. Come with your memories, memorabilia and questions as we remember Hackney’s feminist pasts to collectively imagine a queer feminist future.
Film programme:
Feminist Re-Imaginings at the Rio, 1980-2020
Dir. Selina Robertson, UK, 2022, 11mins
A tape/slide honouring the Rio’s feminist film pasts.
Like Mother Like Son
Dir. Annette Kennerley, UK, 1994, 4 mins
A Lesbian mother and her son describe what they have in common, that includes parties, dressing up and shopping.
Dir. Michelle Deignan, Ireland, 2013, 63mins
Artist and filmmaker Michelle Deignan tells the one part of this story in her brilliant documentary Breaking Ground on the London Irish Women’s Centre, a radical organisation founded to support generations of Irish women in London. The film does more than just recount the story of the Centre in Stoke Newington from its origins in the 1980s to its closure in 2012. It is a creative fusion of montage, archive and oral history that greatly contributes to our understanding of radical feminism, national identity and sexual politics during this period. Made by an all women crew, the film combines captivating and candid archive footage filmed in London over 30 years, with thoughtful and provocative accounts from some of the amazing women who were part of the women’s movement in the city during that time.
+ live Q&A with Michelle Deignan, Vicky Grut, Annette Kennerley and viv acious and Sue O’Sullivan.
This screening has been organised conjunction with Peer’s current exhibition ‘we are a group of people composed of who we are’. 23 June-9 September 2023.
Read Marian Laggary’s brand new Culture Club’s piece on The London Irish Women Centre’s incredible history!