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Seven Summers (2012, 10 mins): Sarah Cracknell narrates this follow-up to Mervyn Day, which revisits the Lea Valley seven years on from the making of that film In the summer of 2005 director Paul Kelly and Saint Etienne spent a month filming the pre-Olympic Lower Lea Valley, around Stratford and Hackney Wick, for the the drama-documentary 'What Have You Done Today Mervyn Day'. 'Seven Summers' is a short (10 minute) film which revisits the area in 2012 to investigate how wholesale redevelopment has affected local residents and the skyline of East London. Using previously unseen footage of the industrial wasteland on which the Olympic park has been built, as well as new footage of a complex landscape, 'Seven Summers' finds an area seemingly caught in a constant state of flux. Filmed and directed by Paul Kelly Written by Bob Stanley Narrated by Sarah Cracknell Produced and edited by Paul Kelly Music by Saint Etienne, Ian Catt, Pete Wiggs Tom Dyckhoff Piece And then what? Seven summers later Paul Kelly and Saint Etienne returned to this landscape [the Lea Valley from What Have You Done Today Mervyn Day?]. It has gone, of course. Completely and utterly, without trace. All that is left on the site is one solitary Victorian warehouse. The 2012 Olympics are about to start. What is so breathtaking about the transformations in the Lower Lea Valley is the contrast. Here was a patch, futuristic in the 19th century, where social movements and invention took place; but left behind by the end of the 20th; and now yanked with a speed and absoluteness into a future not of its choosing. Architecture can make you forget. It's very good at it. That's why powerful people build buildings. In this day and age, you would think that we had means more sophisticated with which to assert one's authority on a place, something nimble and clever, perhaps, involving drones and Jack Bauer. But you can't beat good old-fashioned town planning. Architecture, with its weight and might, can rewrite history, at least until the archaeologists return thousands of years later and see the truth marked in the soil beneath. Film, though, can help you remember. It is better than architecture at telling tales. The fragility of its ephemeral, flickering light makes it perfect for stories of memory and the past. Which is why even Seven Summers, this small epilogue to What Have You Done Today Mervyn Day? is so powerful. The clue is in the title. Just seven summers is all it has taken to wipe out the complex ecosystem of the Lower Lea Valley, built up over hundreds of years. Architecture, by contrast, always tends towards masking the past. It tries to convince us, with its monumentality, that things will remain the same. That's why people build monuments. It's folly. Yet we do it again and again. One day the Olympic buildings, just like the Carpenters estate, will be ruins. 'My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings: Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!' |
