Emily Richardson

Emily Richardson

BLOCK

16mm

12 minutes

2005

Day through night BLOCK is a portrait of a 1960’s London tower block, it’s interior and exterior spaces explored and revealed, patterns of activity building a rhythm and viewing experience not dissimilar from the daily observations of the security guard sat watching the flickering screens with their fixed viewpoints and missing pieces of action.

Block was made over a period of 10 month period in a tower block in south east London from 2004 –05. The film is a portrait of the place that came out of much time spent there.

The security guards office and the bank of CCTV monitors with their random editing patterns and missing pieces of action were used as a starting point in terms of the camera techniques and editing structures employed in the film. All seeing, but seeing nothing at the same time. Working with static camera the fixed shots are repeated and edited together in sequence in a similar way to the CCTV camera recordings that flick from one camera view to another, often disrupting the (visual) ‘narrative’.

The contrast between the exterior and interior of the building, the impersonal common spaces and the personal spaces of the interior of people’s flats gives shape to the portrait.

The soundtrack was built up from recordings made on location at the time of shooting and sounds gathered from various sources and was composed and mixed by Jonah Fox.