Coventry Archives - Jeremy C. Processing

Director – Mira Erdevički – 2022 – UK – Cert. 12a – 88m

**1/2

Three Roma people who have settled in the UK after leaving the Czech and Slovak Republics must navigate life both after Brexit and during the pandemic lockdown – out in UK cinemas on Friday, April 28th

Something film does extremely well is to show people’s lives or wider social attitudes at a given point in time. This documentary was planned to explore a very specific subject matter, but when events changed, the film changed with them to take account of developments. Erdevički originally intended to study the effect on Roma people immigrating to the UK, but as she was doing so, first, the UK’s vote in favour of Brexit resulted in extra bureaucratic obstacles for these people to navigate should they wish to stay in the UK and, second, trying to deal with all that as well as facing all the challenges everybody else was facing under pandemic lockdown. During the pandemic, she had her three subjects film themselves.

Erdevički has chosen her three Roma subjects well: they are all go-getters. The type of people who get things done. All three have come to the UK because they or their families wanted to better their lives and make a positive contribution.… Read the rest

Delia Derbyshire:
The Myths
And Legendary
Tapes

Director – Caroline Catz – 2020 – UK – 98m

*****

Docudrama explores the ten years the legendary electronic musician spent at the BBC Radiophonic Workshop – on BBC iPlayer from Sunday, May 16th for a year

Part documentary, part drama and part performance art, this is a fascinating examination of Delia Derbyshire, the woman who between 1962 and 1973 worked in the BBC Radiophonic Workshop. The film does examine her life and career before and after that, but only briefly. After studying mathematics and music at Cambridge, she became interested in music as an expression of mathematics and, as such, knew that the Radiophonic Workshop was the place she wanted to be.

We see Delia (writer-director Caroline Katz) interviewed for a job at Decca Records only to be told that women don’t work in the technical department but there are openings for secretaries. It’s easy to see that as sexism now, but at that time such attitudes were commonplace. She wonders if her interviewer was the person who turned down the Beatles. We see interviewed Dutch video artist Madelon Hoodykas with whom she collaborated in The Netherlands after her BBC period and there’s some brief footage of the LYC museum set up by Li Yuan-chia near Hadrian’s Wall where she spent some time after a disastrous marriage to a man with whom she had little in common with beyond drinking.… Read the rest