Events

GIVE BIRTH TO ME TOMORROW | Part 3 | Newsreel Collective

Part of Artists’ Moving Image Festival

9 June 2021
7—9pm

Online

A landscape graphic with protest placard like shapes emblazoned with the words ‘GIVE BIRTH TO ME TOMORROW’ in capitalised san serif font. The rectangular shapes splay out across a maroon background, overlapping one another.
Design by Maeve Redmond

We are delighted to announce the second discussion event of GIVE BIRTH TO ME TOMORROW, this year’s Artists’ Moving Image Festival, which has been co-programmed by artists and writers Tako Taal and Adam Benmakhlouf. This event will reflect on the current screening of Stand Together! (1977) by Newsreel Collective. This series of discussion events are titled Listens, sees … Rehearses”.

For this next instalment we are encouraged to transform, unite and consider solidarity. After a year of isolation and distance, but which has also been marked by protest it is hard not to watch Stand Together! and ask what could have been? A document of a single summer’s day where we are forever suspended in a feeling of rage and hope, there is perhaps a timely resonance too with the antiraid action on Kenmure Street in Glasgow last month.

– Adam Benmakhlouf and Tako Taal.

Stand Together! is available free to view on the LUX Scotland website from 2 – 9 June. This event will focus on the film and will be hosted by programmers. We recommend that participants watch the film before the discussion. Watch here.

Poster made by Paddington Printshop, for the Newsreel Collective’s film Stand Together!

Programme:

Newsreel Collective, Stand Together!, 1977. 52 mins, 16mm transferred too digital.

Stand Together! documents the mass day of solidarity on 11th July 1977, in support of striking workers at Grunwick Film Processing Laboratories in Dollis Hill, London. Those at the centre of the pickets were mainly women workers who had moved to the UK from Kenya, Tanzania or Uganda. They had been contending with both poor working conditions and not being able to join a workers’ union – at the time, dominated mostly by white males. The Grunwick dispute was an unsuccessful demand for trade union recognition that led to a two-year strike between 1976 and 1978. The film was made for the Grunwick Strike Committee by the Newsreel Collective members of the Association of Cinematograph, Television and Allied Technicians (ACTT) and the Transport and General Workers’ Union.

Newsreel Collective was formed in 1973/​4, I think with a grant from the BFI film production unit, with the remit to make simple solidarity films to support current struggles. The emphasis very much being on getting films out quickly to respond to the immediate situation, which in the mid to late 70s was quite volatile with worker actions taking place throughout the country and of course there was also the revolution in Portugal which the Newsreal documented.

– Chris Thomas, Newsreel

The film is captioned by Valery Tough. The event will be transcribed live using otter​.ai automated transcription.

Image descriptions:

1. A landscape graphic with protest placard like shapes emblazoned with the words GIVE BIRTH TO ME TOMORROW’ in capitalised san serif font. The rectangular shapes splay out across a maroon background, overlapping one another.

2. A landscape film poster in bright block colours, red, yellow and green. Around the edge of the poster are people’s faces in monochrome red and white framed by green lines akin to film stock. Some people are smiling, some look at the camera. The faces frame an image of a protest in which a big gathering of people stand around a poster that reads WE DEMAND UNION RECOGNITION. UNITE. OVERCOME’ in block capital letters. Below the protest image are the words STAND TOGETHER!’ In red san serif capitals alongside information about the film, including length and format and that it was made in solidarity with the Grunwick Strikes.

GIVE BIRTH TO ME TOMORROW, this year’s Artists’ Moving Image Festival, is supported by Screen Scotland and Film Hub Scotland in partnership with Tramway.

Part of Artists’ Moving Image Festival

LUX Scotland and Tramway’s annual Artists’ Moving Image Festival (AMIF)

Learn more