A13: Road Movie - Part 1 (2008)

A film that fuses stirringly beautiful visuals from unexpected locations, with interview footage from the true characters of the A13, providing testimony to the history, the myths and the folklore of this much-travelled route from London's East End to the Essex coast.
As the audience is taken on a journey from Victorian Whitechapel, out along the Thames corridor to the seaside quirkiness of Southend, this documentary-road-movie challenges our understanding of the English landscape.The film focuses on the overlooked, the hidden, and the disregarded, and seeks out the beautiful and the bizarre along this neglected stretch of land. Whether it be an original Hawksmoor church in Limehouse or a giant inflatable Ronald McDonald in Dagenham, we are treated to new ways of seeing along this congested commuter route.The characters that live and work on the road explain what the A13 means to them. Original residents of the country's first Chinatown deconstruct the myth of Fu Manchu, singer-songwriter Billy Bragg talks about the Beckton Alps and Kubrick's staging of Full Metal Jacket there, and Tory MP David Amess describes the majesty of the Thames Estuary.Others in a diverse line-up of contributors include Pakistani restauranteurs, vicars, Ford union reps, Tilbury dock-workers, West Indian allotment-holders, and lay-by burger van proprietors.From the colossal electric pylons resembling alien creatures striding across Rainham marshes, to the small flowering weeds breaking through the paving of a 6-lane flyover, this film provides a striking reminder of our relationship with the environment, and testimony to the ever-changing landscapes of this fast-developing area.
Co-directors and producers: Rayna Nadeem and Stuart Bamforth
www.dekkoproductions.com

Category:

Film & Animation

Tags:

• Road
• movie;
• A13;
• oral
• history;Thames
• Gateway;regeneration;art
• film;Billy
• Bragg;Beckton
• Alps;Chinatown;
• Tilbury
• Docks;Lahore
• Kebab
• House;
• Rainham
• marshes;Ford's;
• Southend;Whitechapel

[Fareastender]

Great docu about a road I have travelled along hundreds of times.

[plhokko]

sounds like the left wing communist billy bragg talking about barking?? well mr bragg, i hope your happy with what has become of your town? us real barking folk are foreigners in our own town thanks to your beloved labour party!

[skintaxera1]

What a great little doco. I wish I had seen more of this kind of thing, and read more, before the five years or so I spent living in London. It would have made the city even more interesting. Re "wtf does 'immigranted in' mean?", I agree that does seem an ironic remark given that constant waves of migration have been a key feature of the east end for centuries. Maybe that remark can serve as a reminder of the tensions that go with that. A small point in an excellent film tho.

[modemeyes]

Again an excelent video of an important road. 5*

[modemeyes]

Excellent documentry & good photography.