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Transit

Emily Richardson

2006 00:07:11 United KingdomColorStereo16:9Video

Description

Transit journeys through the East End of London, quietly observing the shifting architectural and social landscape. Through the soundtrack the writer Iain Sinclair provides the pieces of a labyrinthine narrative by which the viewer can navigate these landscapes in transition.

Underneath Smithfield Market, at a juncture where the past encroaches upon the contemporary world, a modern two-story car park fills the old underground meat depot. It leaves only one remaining row of the original high arched vaults, where the film was projected as part of a Measure arts project in conjunction with the London Architectural Biennale in June 2006.

Dir/Prod/Camera/Sound: Emily Richardson.
With special thanks to Iain Sinclair and Simon Day of Measure Arts

About Emily Richardson

Emily Richardson is a filmmaker and researcher examining the trace of human presence on particular landscapes and environments on the cusp of change.

Richardson’s films document sites of power and corporate interest at particular moments in time uncovering layers of narrative embedded in these contested landscapes, whether East London prior to the Olympics, abandoned military architecture of the Atomic Weapons Research Establishment of Orford Ness, the oil industry on the Scottish coastline, the contentious expansion of Sizewell nuclear power station, or the exploitation of the Far North.

Richardson’s work sits within a lineage of filmmakers addressing ideas about our relationship to and impact on natural and constructed landscapes and environments through a reflexive observational approach to making work using a cross-disciplinary methodology that includes walking, photography, filmmaking, sound recording, historical and archive research, interviews, books and podcasts.

Richardson's films have been shown in galleries, museums and festivals internationally including Tate Modern and Tate Britain, London, Pompidou Centre, Paris, Barbican Cinema, London; Anthology Film Archives, New York and Venice, Edinburgh, BFI London, Rotterdam and New York Film Festivals.