Review: On Landguard Point

How do you map a place, and go beyond its surface area to chart its movement through time, space and history? On Landguard Point attempts to do this for the flatlands of East Anglia, taking a pair of scissors to the conventional map of the coastline and inviting us to disregard what we previously thought we knew of the area's topography, starting and ending as a place in which our senses are submerged by the sea that's all around and by the earth below. Out on a limb, bordered by water on three sides, this is a landscape which over centuries has grown and receded with the sea; it has long been a site of conflict and battle, both among man and with the elements. Languard Point was an island before the expanse of shingle crept back towards the mainland, and the film introduces us to those who are “trying to maintain a sense of fixture in this ever-shifting landscape”. Our experience of the Great British weather, as well as of sound, is at its most extreme by the sea and the film sums up the coastal experience in a palette that is limited to various shades of grey and green, soundtracked by amplifications of the creaking of a flag pole, the churning of the sea, the swirling of the sky, the rumble of boats rising massive from the horizon, fog horns and, of course, the omnipresent gulls, over which rove and probe the compositions of Michael Nyman. The film plays with the way in which our understanding of place is shaped through drawing, painting, writing, folklore, music, and even food, inviting us to read a narrative over the shoulder of a typewriter, literally holding a mirror up to the land's diversity of flora and fauna and reducing the area's essence to neon announcements in a surreal piece of installation art. Local landmarks are recreated as grandiose cakes – slice of Wisbech Castle, anyone? It's an absurdist yet affectionate vision of this little corner of Britain, where truth is stranger than fiction, told through a deadpan, gentle, poetic voiceover. Made as the East of England's contribution to the Cultural Olympiad, the cultural counterweight to the Olympic Games, On Landguard Point presents a series of tableaux with a distinctly-English cast of brass bands, Morris men, historical reenactments, metal detectors, treasure hunters, archaeologists, majorettes (pom-poms-a-rustle) and the ubiquitous seaside donkey. It's an apt but uneasy depiction of a desolate but beautiful place and above all, it's a film about home and the things we do to belong: the seaside is performed, ritualised and observed, shaped by us and what we make of it.

On Landguard Point was shown at the Cornerhouse on Sunday 8 September. For more information about the project visit www.onlandguardpoint.com.

Swandown DVD review

I was recently asked by the Cornerhouse if I would be interested in reviewing the DVD release of Swandown, which was one of my favourite films of last year (it premiered at the Cornerhouse as part of Abandon Normal Devices festival). As a big fan of both canals and director Andrew Kötting, I was happy to take up the chance to watch the film again.

Swandown review

In autumn 2011, writer Iain Sinclair and film-maker Andrew Kötting set off on a 160 mile voyage from the seaside town of Hastings, East Sussex, to inner-city Hackney in east London, site of the 2012 Olympics. Neither are strangers to the ripe themes of English coastal towns or epic journeys: Kötting previously directed the experimental coastal travelogue Gallivant, whilst Sinclair, who resides partly in Hackney, partly in St Leonards-on-Sea (next to Hastings), is perhaps best known for his book London Orbital, a pyschogeographic exploration of London's M25 motorway. What made the journey remarkable was that it was made by the two men in a cartoonishly oversized craft, a swan pedalo named Edith in honour of poet Edith Sitwell, liberated from Hastings' seashore-facing 'Swan Lake' in the name of 'releasing a trapped soul of the sea'. The resulting film, Swandown, is a dreamlike, fragmentary evocation of their unlikely, ambitious journey and the two men's friendship, as seen from 'silly little canals and creeks and horrible English muddy places' (Sinclair) in the closing light of an Indian summer.

The film-makers admit that Swandown is the 'black swan in the tradition of narrative cinema', and the film offers an impressionistic rather than linear depiction of their adventure. Jem Finer's ethereal score floats hazily over the film amid fragments of loosely connected archive film and voiceovers by Sinclair and Kötting musing on the mythology of the swan. The pair bob up and down, 'awash and reckless', on the English Channel (a journey that almost fails to start), glide up canals and rivers encountering fishermen, cows, dog walkers, paddlers and pleasure craft – the 'invisibles' not normally revealed in officially-sanctioned or popular imagery of the waterways – and, absurdly, get a lift up the River Thames on a tug. The film is a reminder of how much of a presence water is in the English landscape, from calm, bucolic rivers shaded by trees to the industrial waterscape of the Thames, a workaday, working river where boat traffic is overlooked by fast-flowing cars on the Dartford Bridge, and the ubiquitous inner-city canal confetti of bottles, cartons and balloons. Waterways are presented as being ripe for exploration, backwater viewing points into the secret lives of English towns and cities.

As Edith makes her way towards her destination, however, there is a growing sense of unease and a sense of the impending curtailment of physical and creative freedom. Not only are Sinclair and Kötting running out of time as Iain has to abandon Edith for the plane, a faster and more practical form of transport, needing to reach an appointment in America, but the journey is increasingly fraught with potential danger and obstacles, from health and safety to the tight security of the Olympic site, sealed off from canal craft by a vicious-looking fence. During the journey Sinclair expresses the hopelessness he feels when contemplating the huge enclosures of the Olympic site and, indeed, the whole project is positioned as an antidote to the pomp and excess of the Olympics. Hauling the pedalo up riverbanks and over muddy fields, spending a whole month in the same clothes and being able to wet themselves whenever they want to, an image of personal sacrifice akin to the more-celebrated figure of the marathon runner, Swandown is as much a spectacle of physical impossibility as the athletic feats which go on in crowd-lined sporting arenas.

Released in the year of the Olympics, as part of the so-called Cultural Olympiad, yet existing in a parallel universe to the competitive, corporate nature of the games, Swandown puts poetry back into the act of endurance, a timely, touching and irreverent acknowledgement that perseverance, as much as inspiration, is integral to the act of creativity – and vice versa.

To purchase the film on DVD visit www.cornerhouse.org/bookstore/product/swandown-film-dvd.

Photos copyright of Anonymous Bosch.

The Shrieking Violet issue 17

The Shrieking Violet issue 17 accidentally turned out to be an architecture fanzine (or at least, if there's a theme it would be buildings and the built environment), possibly a subconscious influence from visiting the Archizines exhibition in London in November. Pavilions run through the issue (and I have written about my favourite pavilions in architecture and art).

South Manchester-based illustrator Andy Carter was inspired by pavilions to create the cover. He says: “The inspiration for it came from when you said you were writing about pavilions, although I may have mistook that to mean 'bandstands'. So I just thought about what happens on bandstands like brass bands, street performers and chavs/tramps hanging around.” Andy is equally inspired by everyday life and more subjective narratives. His work is heavily reliant on line, shape and texture. He enjoys screen-printing and margaritas. I've wanted to ask Andy to do a cover ever since he illustrated a double page spread on Channel swimmer Sunny Lowry for the Victoria Baths Fanzine Convention Souvenir programme.

Stuart Wheeler has kindly allowed me to reproduce a selection from a set of photos he took of Victor Pasmore's Apollo pavilion in Peterlee (currently top of my wish list for daytrip destinations), which has recently been listed. Stuart is an Architectural Assistant at 3DReid in Manchester and graduated from [Re_Map] unit at the Manchester School of Architecture. He tweets @stuwheeler.

Following the excitement of last year's Festival of Britain 60th anniversary year, Joe Austin has written about the spin-off Live Architecture exhibition that took place in Poplar in 1951. Joe is a qualified Architect, originally from the Midlands but a naturalised Londoner for the last 22 years or so (he lives just up the road from the site of the Live Architecture exhibition). Joe's interests are wide (his blog best illustrates his scattergun mind), but generally revolve around writing, design, architecture, art, culture and history. He likes nothing better than learning new aspects of things he thought he knew about. Joe is a fellow William Mitchell fan, and lover of twentieth century art and design, which is how I discovered his wonderful blog.

Kenn Taylor has contributed an article about the 'boom and bust' of social housing, with specific reference to the Woodchurch Estate in Birkenhead. Kenn is a writer and journalist based in Liverpool with a particular interest in the relationship between culture and the urban environment.

Liz Buckley has reviewed Lost is Found, an exhibition currently showing in gallery 1 at the Cornerhouse. Liz is a final year Art History student from Salford. She studies at Manchester University and is going to start an MA in Gallery Studies in September. She loves post-war art and is an aspiring curator and art critic in her spare time.

Jessica Mautner has written up a recipe for 'Liverpool Corpse Cakes' – biscuits inspired by both the local Chinese community and Victorian funeral rituals which were handed out to passers-by in Liverpool city centre in November. Jessica is a multidisciplinary artist based in Manchester. She makes temporary, site-specific encounters which are a political response to place, space, history and community. Her materials-based, experimental practice explores sensoria, particularly through texture and taste, and she is interested in the negotiation and subversion of built and planned environments by flexible organic forms. In the past few years, she has taken part in exhibitions, residencies and festivals across Europe and the UK; in January she made a new piece in Newcastle commissioned by Situation Rhubarb, and her short film Phi is showing at Bangkok Experimental Film Festival.

Richard Howe has written about Alfred Hitchock's classic film Spellbound. Richard is a Manchester-based filmmaker, caterer and musician (google Realitease@vimeo.com, Devilsorange@youtube.com, Tremors@vimeo.com). Look out for Dream Bubble, Realitease Feature and Frankenmovie projects. Hear his music here.

Steph Fletcher has drawn inspiration from Escher to illustrate Richard's article. Steph recently started an MA in art at the University of Central Lancashire in Preston, and helps run the North West-based zine Twigs and Apples. She enjoys drawing, writing, cycling and vegan cooking.

Nick Mitchell has contributed two short stories. He was born in Bradford in 1975 and has lived in Manchester since 1999, working as a musician, writer and record label owner (Golden Lab Records). His musical projects have included Summum Bonum, I Had An Inkling, Beach Fuzz, A Wake, The Gamecock, Float Riverer and Chalaque. His stories and poems have been published in both the UK and the USA.

Read the Shrieking Violet online here:

Open publication - Free publishing - More architecture

Download and print your own copy of the Shrieking Violet here.

Very badly photocopied copies will can currently be found at Islington Mill, Salford and Cornerhouse, Manchester and will left around various places around Manchester city centre next week, including Piccadilly Records, Good Grief! shop (in the Soup Kitchen), Koffee Pot, Oklahoma and Nexus Art Cafe.

To request a copy in the post (free) or to contribute to future editions email Natalie.Rose.Bradbury@googlemail.com or join the Shrieking Violet Facebook group.

Also recommended

Your City Is A Public Orchard is a new guide to foraging in the city made by Hotspur House-based Textbook Studio. It's a book with a handcrafted feel and plenty of pictures, which folds out into a page full of recipes for nettles, rosehips and much more! Best of all, it's free and can be picked up from various locations around the city.

the modernist issue 3 and other publications I have enjoyed recently

Issue 3 of Manchester Modernist Society's magazine the modernist, themed Boom or Bust, is out now, just in time for Christmas. I've been loose with this issue's theme and used it as an appreciation of some of my favourite, underrated 1960s films: Charlie Bubbles (written by Shelagh Delaney, directed by and starring Albert Finney and featuring Liza Minelli), The White Bus (written by Shelagh Delaney and directed by Lindsay Anderson), Mrs Brown, You'e Got a Lovely Daughter, a comedy musical starring the pop group Herman's Hermits, A Kind of Loving, and The London Nobody Knows (starring James Mason).

Whilst some of the films are seemingly slight or frivolous, all share a preoccupation with the new housing projects and changing types of living that were replacing bomb damaged cities and Victorian slums, capturing a sense of optimism and hope for the future that we now know was short lived.

Mrs Brown, You've Got A Lovely Daughter might come across as slightly cheesy, but I've watched it twice and find it genuinely charming. I found myself singing It's Nice to be Out in the Morning every day when I left the house for weeks afterwards!

If you're interested in finding out more about Manchester and Salford on screen, look out for historian CP Lee's talks which take place at the Cornerhouse from time to time, as well as his Hollywood of the North Coach Trip, or visit his sites It's A Hotun and Manchester Film History.

the modernist issue 3 also features an introduction from Shrieking Violet inspiration Owen Hatherley, as well as Eddy Rhead on TV broadcasting from the north, Matthew Whitfield on Liverpool's Brutalist sandcastle, Dan Russell on Liverpool International Garden Festival, Aidan Turner-Bishop on Hornsea Pottery, Morag Rose on Modernist Essex, Benjamin Tallis on Leningrad, Stephen Hale on FIAT's Lingotto factory, Christien Garcia on Canadian Modernism, and news and reviews. For stockists or to subscribe visit www.the-modernist-mag.co.uk.

Other publications which have made me happy recently:

• FEAST is a new food and art journal initiated by Manchester-based curator and writer Laura Mansfield. Issue 1 is out now, themed Indulgence, featuring everything from recipes to an essay on food and film.
• The latest edition of annual arts journal Corridor 8, which assumes a different form each year, is out now. Issue 3 is divided into three editions, the first of which focuses on commercial galleries across the north of England, containing interviews with their directors on their motivations and the challenges and advantages of operating outside London.
• Canning is a beautifully designed and illustrated fanzine about the area of Liverpool by writer Kenn Taylor, artist Natalie Hughes and designer Mike Carney that combines creative writing with personal observations on place. Kenn Taylor has also recently written a more in depth book about another part of Liverpool, entitled A Brief History of Edge Hill, as part of the Metal Culture project in the city, designed by Ultimate Holding Company.
  
• COPY is a publication compiled by Yorkshire-based Critical Writing Collective. The current issue, titled Unfold, features a contribution by Manchester-based artist Daniel Fogarty. 'In Public' is a photo of a small belemnite fossil embedded in the polished stone of a basin in the toilets of the Bridgewater Hall. Due to certain obstacles (the fossil being in the ladies' toilets), I was asked to take the photograph.
• During a recent visit to London I bought a copy of art and culture magazine Garageland, which is published by east London's Transition Gallery. The current issue plays with the theme 'Fake'. Highlights include articles on the south Kent coast's 'pluto' houses and the craze for mock Tudor.

I also really enjoyed spending a couple of hours browsing the Archizines exhibition at the Architectural Association in Bloomsbury, featuring architecture zines from all over the world, including the modernist and Preston is my Paris. Other highlights included Block and Matzine from the UK, and a zine which photographed street furniture and public art across Latin America.

The strange stories of sounds — Kinokophone at MadLab

Last Thursday I spent the evening in the Northern Quarter immersed in strange sounds and unusual storytelling. 'Kinokologue 1: Sound spore', a temporary sound art installation in the exhibition space at MadLab, was the culmination of a Cornerhouse/Paul Hamlyn Foundation Micro Commission, followed by Kinokophonography upstairs, a regular listening event which showcases sounds sent in from all over the world.

'Kinokologue 1: Sound Spores' was an interactive collection of sound specimens arranged as 'spores' embedded in different objects. Spores were tucked in drawers and filed neatly in a cabinet ready to be opened, or presented as threaded images, interpreted by embroidery artist Akiko Yanagimoto, framed in glass as if in a collaged scene. At the same time as vintage objects were reused and reinvented as listening posts, everyday sounds plucked from their context took on a new meaning as part of a growing sound archive. Listeners were invited to borrow headphones, wander round and get ready to listen closely, then help classify sounds by suggesting categories or turning dials to bring sounds together into compositions and writing down instructions based on successful combinations for future visitors. Although samples included recognisable sounds and even those we might conventionally call music — the meandering of a violin, piercing whistles — the most exciting sounds to explore were those that did not have an obvious source. Burbling water and crunching leaves are atmospheric, but more elusive sounds such as faint 'put-putting' or vaguely familiar scraping are the most interesting as, rather than placing you directly in a scene in your head, they make you listen again and again to try to remember back to the situation in which you've heard them before (if at all).

The origins of the word 'kinokophone' are drawn from both cinema ('kino') and sound ('phone'), and it's easy to build a mental story around each spore. Some sounds stand on their own

— such as the simple, repeated onomatopoeia of the Japanese word 'nyokinyoki', but the recordings presented on the night were not heard in isolation. Contributors either introduced their recording in person or sent a description and context for their sounds, whether a reminiscence about a visit to the dentist that brought about a recording of a dentist's drill and suction — "my pain is your listening pleasure", an anecdote about the conditions in which the recording was taken — conjuring up the exposed, windswept discomfort of hanging around on the side of the mountain to record a pile of rocks, or more technical descriptions about how the sound was achieved — as in 'Growth of reverb', a recording taking advantage of the effects of footsteps on the acoustics of a stairwell at the University of Manchester, a place that was well known to some of the audience. Even those recordings that feature the presence of people are disorientating once stripped of their context: you wouldn't have guessed the setting for a conversation between young people unless told it took place at a goth festival in Whitby.

Sitting in a room of neatly arranged rows of chairs listening to recordings might seem like a strange concept for an evening, but the host described it as a way to "find out about the world by listening to what's around". Whilst my expectations of what an ice berg in Australia would sound like (sparse, barren, windswept) were confounded (it actually sounded bubbling, watery and alive), the recording of a busy, noisy, early morning in Mombasa sounded as if it could have been taken from any urban dwelling or office block with the window open on a summer's day. Recordings such as the Amazon rainforest, taken from the British Library, with its variety of sounds and array of natural wonders (including a bird whose recurring call descended a scale in a way that was almost comical and another bird whose insistent brilling made you wonder if it was the inspiration for the telephone's ring), and an amazingly evocative amplification of tree roots creaking in the wind like groaning wooden furniture, achieved in Lithuania using contact mikes, were beautifully observed. However, my favourite recording was of a sound so ordinary you would not normally think to stop to listen to it. A recording of the shaking of a tin roof on the Manchester University students' union, caused to move by the reverberations of the bass and drums-dominated practise session of a heavy metal band, couldn't help but make me smile.

Find out more about the work of the Kinokophone collective at www.kinokophone.com.

Manchester on Film, the Cornerhouse, Thursday May 14

I’ve long wanted to go inside the North West Film Archive on Chorlton Street, intrigued by what celluloid time capsules of Manchester life lie within. Last night I got a taster, at a special screening of films from the archive at the Cornerhouse.

I’ve also long been meaning to write an article about the decline of the local press in relation to a film about one newspaper, the Wakefield Express, that was recently rescreened during protests against moving the Wakefield Express from its city centre site to an out of town location.

I’ve wanted to be a reporter for as long as I can remember, and finished my news writing training at the end of January, only to enter an industry in decline, every week bringing news of more and more redundancies on weekly and daily newspapers.

It was during my adventures in the film section of Central Library on an early day of unemployment that I discovered what is probably my new favourite film - Wakefield Express: Portrait of a Newspaper, directed by Lindsay Anderson in 1952.

Imagine my delight when last night I discovered that Manchester has its own version, produced by the Guardian in 1960. News Story is a short documentary film that explains the function of the paper - ‘to inform and entertain through news, comment and opinion’ - as well as how it was made (these were the days of Linotype and hot lead).

Lasting only twenty minutes, the film goes behind the scenes at the offices of the Manchester Evening News and Guardian, four years before the Guardian moved to London. It’s a portrait of the Manchester Guardian, tracing the history of the paper, from its formation in 1821, following the Peterloo Massacre, through its famous editor CP Scott to its status an international paper sending news, via Manchester, to cities all over Europe, from Vienna to Milan.

The film visits each section of the newspaper in turn, including the editor and subeditors. We meet the writers on the international news desk, where we hear about floods in India, and local reporters interviewing strikers, as well as being introduced to the sports desk, cartoon section and features writers.

Reporters call in stories from telephone boxes and copy is sent around the country by wire machine before the paper makes its journey across the United Kingdom by train.

All the films shown were fascinating, including a behind the scenes look at Manchester City in the days long before football was the big business it has become today.

My other favourite, though, was Late Hope Street, from 1968, a grainy black and white film - ‘deliberately arty’ according to the man who introduced it - showing the regeneration of Hulme and Moss Side, and the slum clearance of whole areas of terraced housing. The man warned us that it would be accompanied by pathos inducing music, and sad strings led us to sympathise with the narrator, a lady who was refusing to leave her home amongst boarded up shells and bulldozers. She spoke of the pride the people around her had in their houses, and clearly couldn’t understand why the council was trying to get rid of her home. Against shots of people carrying front doors on their backs over heaps of rubble where streets once stood and children removing salvageable furniture through front windows, she told us ‘all we wanted was a bathroom and an indoor toilet’. She spoke of communities split up and flung across the city, often miles from each other.

Our Friends the Police was more lighthearted, showing an almost unrecognisable Manchester of flat caps and cobblestones, horses and carts and double decker trams, adverts for Bovril everywhere.

We were shown some propaganda films too, from a fundraising film for Manchester Society for the Blind, humorous for its outdated attitudes, to Summer on the Farm, a wartime drive to get people working out in the fields that emphasised the interdependence between city and country. A City Speaks, from 1946, was the most exhilarating, a council produced film that set the rollercoasters of Belle Vue, speeding over the city, a wrestling bout and a football match against the Halle Orchestra playing Wagner’s Ride of the Valkyries.

One of the few colour films showed a 1970s Piccadilly Gardens as a riot of flowers in the sunshine - very different to how it is today! Smithfield Market, similarly, showed the activity of the now boarded up, deserted market on Swan Street in the days when it was a thriving place in which to buy flowers, meat and vegetables.

There was lots of architecture on display, including an unrecognisable Market Street, and landmark events like King George opening Central Library and laying the foundation stone of the Town Hall extension, but as ever it was the shots of ordinary people and day to day life that I liked best.

http://www.nwfa.mmu.ac.uk/

Of Time and the City

SOME films are works of art and others, like Terence Davies' new film Of Time and the City, are literary, almost poetic, works.

Veteran director Terence Davies narrates his new film, which ties in with Liverpool's year as Capital of Culture, in breathless, comforting undertones, like a much loved grandfather who's leaning over you to confidentially tell a bedtime story. While tinged with regret, in many ways Of Time and the City is very humorous.

The highly personal film, documenting Davies' return to Liverpool, his home town, starts by reciting part of Ozymandias by Percy Bysshe Shelley, and recalling Alfred Edward Housman's nostalgic words 'happy highways where I went and cannot come again'. Davies goes on to reference James Joyce, Friedrich Engels and Carl Jung, but never strays away from the ordinary people of Liverpool, for example looking into the lives of women doing laundry. He often focuses on the very young and very old, as those who stand for Liverpool as it was and how it will be in the future.

Twenty years ago, Terence Davies made a bittersweet, autobiographical film, Distant Voices, Still Lives, that was set almost entirely in the redbrick house he grew up in in the 1940s and early 1950s. Of Time and the City is similarly autobiographical, but places Davies' formative years, complete with burgeoning homosexuality and atheism, in a wider context: a Liverpool that was coping with poverty and rationing, and knew the value of 'happiness on a budget', an England that was giving street parties celebrating the lavish coronation of a new Queen and 'fossil monarchy' while the rest of the time it went without, and a world that was heading into the Korean war.

The film, which is set mainly to clips of classical music - from Liszt and Mahler to John Tavener - also serves as a tribute to the golden age of cinema and Hollywood stars, and Davies' love of classical music.

Of Time and the City is a poignant and emotional elegy to a lost Liverpool, one those places that we 'hate to love and love to hate', taking place almost entirely in a smoky black and white. Davies laments 'Where are you, the Liverpool I knew and loved? Where have you gone without me?'. Twenty first century Liverpool is so different that he's an 'alien in my own land.' As the Empire was on the decline, so was the Liverpool of old. Glimpses into house proud women cooking and scrubbing their front steps give way to images of demolition and vandalism.

The Liverpool in Of Time and Only City seems like a faraway land of cobblestones, trams, horses and carts and hire purchase, although in reality what we're seeing took place in the not so distant past. It comes across as a strangely old-fashioned place. Davies juxtaposes an idyllic scene of light rippling on a duckpond with a reminder that homosexuality was illegal until the second half of the twentieth century. Whereas the film jolts into early, ultra-vivid colour footage for the wedding of 'Betty and Phil' and the opening of the Catholic Cathedral (the building of which cuts through the film), the everyday life of most Liverpudlians remained starkly black and white.

Of Time and the City is remarkably coherent for a non-narrative film that is collaged from archive footage, and sweeps from everyday scenes of the docks and crowds watching Liverpool football club to swooping shots of the skyline. It's like we're watching a silent film – the music that accompanies the clips, from choral chanting to Ewan MacColl's 'Dirty Old Town', makes us feel as if we're cut off and peering in on history, outsiders trespassing on tableaux in someone's memory.

The 'paradise' of tower blocks and new towns that were created after the war looks just as remote and detached as the leftover Victorian slum housing that was knocked down to make way for it. Davies uses footage panning over fearsome municipal architecture that shows the 'British genius for creating the dismal'. Whereas before, the crammed streets of terraced houses were alive with children playing in the streets and a sense of community, afterwards the overall impression is of desertion and emptiness, the new city skyline looking like an architect's model or toy town rather than an inhabited urban centre.

I'm not from Liverpool, and I've only been there twice, but I felt strangely moved by the film, which ends up amidst the bars and shops of modern Liverpool. For all its problems, we're left feeling in awe of Liverpool, in all its glamour and majesty, as the camera soars over the Liver Building for the last time.