Roxy Bar and Screen, 128-132 Borough High St, London, SE1 1LB, entry £4
UCL Urban Laboratory and Passengerfilms present the third event in a season of screenings on urban architectures. Join us for an evening of film and conversation on ‘Vertical Space’, featuring ‘Man on Wire’ (2008), and shorts ‘City of Cranes’ (2007) and ‘Vertical Expectations’ (2011).
James Marsh’s ‘Man on Wire’ looks at tightrope walker Philippe Petit’s daring, but illegal, high-wire routine between the World Trade Center’s twin towers. We will also be showing Eva Weber’s “City of Cranes”, which takes the viewer high in the sky to look at the world through the eyes and words of crane drivers – a must-see for anyone who has ever wondered what it is like to work hundreds of feet above the ground. The second short will be Simona Piantieri’s ‘Vertical Expectations’, which explores the nexus between architecture, development and society through an ethnographic analysis of the construction of the Shard, the tallest building in the European Union, located just up the road from the Roxy Bar & Screen.
Simona Piantieri and Eva Weber will be in conversation after the film and will give a directors’ Q&A chaired by Andrew Harris, lecturer in Urban Studies and Geography at UCL. Andrew has recently researched elevated transport projects in Mumbai and is currently developing a website called Tall Tales that collects public stories about tall buildings. Peter Adey, Reader in Human Geography at RHUL and author of Aerial Life: Spaces, Mobilities, Affects (2010), and an upcoming Reaktion book titled Air, will also give a talk considering the cultural connotations of air, particularly the histories of levitation.