Bartlett Film Exchange / Urban Lab Films: The Seven Sisters Indoor Market

A colossal social transformation reflected in the way our cities are being re-designed is taking place, and we stand to lose out. Developers and politicians are building a new skyline, and with it, bearing a new standard of living costs. Less desirable places are left behind and communities left voiceless, powerless and isolated in the planning and decision-making process.

The Seven Sisters Indoor Market (Klearjos Papanicolaou, 2016), a fly-on-the-wall documentary about one of Tottenham’s most beloved markets, portrays, with numerous and diverse businesses sitting side-by-side vying for custom. Look more closely, and it’s evident that it also doubles as an informal cultural centre for immigrants from Latin America, Africa, and elsewhere. Public and private, social and commercial, native and foreign, are merged into a social attitude of inclusiveness - an example of humanity exceptionally embedded into urban space. It is a market imbued with a ‘living room’ feeling made up of informality and spontaneous cosmopolitanism.

Juxtaposing the sounds, shapes and colours of the market and its patrons with those elsewhere in London, the playful filming style employs various methods of representing space - the interior begins to resemble a street system or ‘neighbourhood', such that the market comes to seem like a self-contained village.  

Premiered at the East End Film Festival in June 2016, we’re happy to welcome the director Klearjos Papanicolaou, co-creator Marios Kleftakis, Tatiana Moreira de Souza (Bartlett School of Planning, UCL) and David McEwen (Latin Corner UK), to participate in a discussion following the screening.

This screening is free, but places are limited. To reserve a ticket, please register here.

Screening in partnership with Urban Lab Films and The Bartlett Film Exchange.

Further links:

• Film website