‘NOW FILMING: Art, Documentary and Resistance in 1930s East London’, a new exhibition co-curated by Sam Stephens, opens at Four Corners in East London.

Launching at Four Corners Gallery in January, NOW FILMING: Art, Documentary and Resistance in 1930s East London explores the fascinating story of the Workers Film and Photo League (WFPL)

The WFPL employed the camera as ‘a weapon in the struggle’ to represent working-class people’s lives and their campaigns against poverty, exploitation, and the rise of fascism. NOW FILMING focuses on this unexplored moment of cultural resistance during the social conflicts of 1930s Britain.

The Film & Photo League countered the capitalist press barons that dominated the media by creating images produced by and for working people themselves. Films such as Bread (1934), employ Soviet-inspired montage sequences to show the desperation of hunger and unemployment, while Workers Newsreel No. 3 (1935) captures mass demonstrations in London against the hated Means Test for unemployment relief. Photographs document protests in working-class Bermondsey against Mosley’s British Union of Fascists in 1937 – one year after the infamous Battle of Cable Street in the East End.

NOW FILMING brings together newly discovered archival material, workers’ film newsreels, photographs and agitprop, exploring their use in campaigns against the inter-war realities of hunger, fascism and unemployment.  Issues which still resonate today.

Nearest tube: Bethnal Green, Central Line  

Opening: Thursday 23 January 2025, 6.30-8.30pm 

Free admission. Opening hours 11am – 6pm Weds – Sat