INTENTIONAL COMMUNITY: THE ART OF LIVING AND THE SCIENCE OF LIFE Nick Jordan/Clara Casian, 2017, UK, 59’

A documentary portrait of Braziers Park School of Integrative Social Research (Braziers), a resident community and progressive college exploring co-existence, collective work and our place in nature. Centred upon insights from current residents and members, the film interweaves scenes of daily life with the natural features, architectural characteristics and diverse cultural history of the community.

Set in the wider context of intentional communities, sustainable living, and the economics of postcapitalism, Intentional Community explores the ‘sociobiological’ ideas of Braziers’ founders - psychiatrist Norman Glaister and educationalist Dorothy Glaister, who established the community in 1950 as a social experiment in group co-existence. Today, Braziers is the longest-running secular resident community in the UK, and hosts courses and festivals such as Supernormal.

Structured with a collaged, layered approach, the composite film makes correspondences between the past and present, combing interior and exterior spaces of the gothic manor house with material from Braziers’ archive of photographs, audio recordings and film; including scenes from a Situationist gathering in 1964, attended by writers Alexander Trocchi and Jeff Nuttall, artist John Latham and psychiatrist R.D. Laing. Intentional Community also explores Braziers’ links to the Common Wealth political party, the Order of Woodcraft Chivalry/Kibbo Kift and Grith Fyrd peace camps, reflecting Braziers’ deep-rooted social values, progressive ideas on education, ecological awareness and pertinent links to the counterculture.

Original soundtrack score by Lord Mongo.

Part of a weekend programme exploring the interaction of self and space: no longer content with land, London Short Film Festival is anchored up for a weekender residency aboard the Air Draft, moored alongside Grow Hackney.

A repurposed industrial barge-turned-inflatable theatre, the Air Draft (created by architects Thomas Randall-Page and Benedetta Rogers) is designed to float atop Hackney’s waterways hosting performance and play. Inspired by architect Jeffrey Shaw’s “floating city” Ant Farm, we’ve programmed two days of live performance and film on both Air Draft and at Grow Hackney, taking the Air Draft’s homage to public art and playfulness further down the rabbit hole of LSFF’s fascination with the pneumatic. A programme of archival documentaries look outwards to the interaction of self and space in the inflatables of community arts collectives such as Action Space.