GREEN PLASTIC FILMS

In 1977 I was 4 years old. It was the year Star Wars: A New Hope was released and the year the Sex Pistols released God Save the Queen. Thirty Four years later, Jess Forrest composed a song and put it on the internet. I’m sure Jess (who plays under the moniker Castle If), a twentysomething noise synth wizard currently based in Toronto, had a completely different vision in her head attached to that year, but my impressions of the late seventies have increasingly been fluid. The time-space in my head is occupied by space operas, flared pants, classic anime and SCTV. But other identities for the seventies emerged as I became more interested in the non mainstream musical trends that now seem so revered (punk and industrial).

This short film is an evocation of late seventies council flat bleakness that inundates documentaries of the time and is consistently revisited by music critics of today when talking about the general mood of the era in the UK (I call it the Joy Division aesthetic although it could also be applied to the presentation of industrial music of the time). The footage mostly comes from a BBC documentary about the destruction of Liverpool neighbourhood’s to make way for international style inner city public housing projects. Special thanks to Castle If.