East End Through The Ages is a Green Umbrella release. The video is a production by the famous and somewhat controversial actor, playwright, film star and director, Steven Berkoff.
Why? Because Steven Berkoff is an east Ender and he returns to the place of his birth to tell its fascinating ... Read review
The story of London's East End, that exotic dumping ground of a great city, with its ... more
colourful, cheeky, salt-of-the-earth inhabitants is told by Steven Berkoff, film star, playwright and director, who grew up in the East End and lives there still, desp...
Advantages: Interesting Disadvantages: Not enough of the "old" history of the East end
East End Through The Ages is a Green Umbrella release. The video is a production by the famous and somewhat controversial actor, playwright, film star and director, Steven Berkoff.
Why? Because Steven Berkoff is an east Ender and he returns to the place of his birth to tell its fascinating and exciting story.
He describes the East End as the stomach of London, with the limbs of London, as it were, taking the "food" ... ...his attempt to explain that the East end has become tired of being the stomach and wants to grow into a head, is an analogy too far. As with many places, I would contend that the East End is changing not because it particularly wants to, but because other people are making it changer. And there is, I think, a big difference.
Berkoff starts his story with the Battle of Cable Street, which took place in 1936. Sadly, Berkoff proves that ... more
East End Through The Ages is a Green Umbrella release. The video is a production by the famous and somewhat controversial actor, playwright, film star and director, Steven Berkoff.
Why? Because Steven Berkoff is an east Ender and he returns to the place of his birth to tell its fascinating and exciting story.
He describes the East End as the stomach of London, with the limbs of London, as it were, taking the "food" that is brought in from the stomach. It is a somewhat strained metaphor, but I think I can understand where Berkoff is coming from on that one. Though his attempt to explain that the East end has become tired of being the stomach and wants to grow into a head, is an analogy too far. As with many places, I would contend that the East End is changing not because it particularly wants to, but because other people are making it changer. And there is, I think, a big difference.
Berkoff starts his story with the Battle of Cable Street, which took place in 1936. Sadly, Berkoff proves that there is no ham like an old ham, and immediately uses the dreadful incidents of that day (when the Black Shirts and their leader Oswald Moseley marched through the East End of London) as a vehicle to promote his play "'East', first written in 1975 and revised in the East End in 1999."
The film of the street fighting is interesting, but I would have liked to have seen this dealt with in the political context of the day, perhaps by a historian, rather than by a playwright known for his use of polemics.
The battle of Cable Street is now commemorated by a giant mural "to ensure that the men who turned back the tide of British fascism wont ever be forgotten." It was painted between 1982 and 1983 and is, indeed, a very stirring portrait of what happened when 100,000 Jews and non-Jews fought Moseley. And defeated him. Incidentally, Berkoff's uncle Sam is honoured in the mural, as he was one of the leaders of what Berkoff describes as "the resistance movement."
The next piece of the programme covers the war years and the mass evacuation of thousands of London children and the terrible blitz.
The one flaw with the programme East End Through the Ages is that it does not cover the East End Through the Ages, As Berkoff says: "Let me begin, where memory begins…" Of course, beginning the story where memory begins does rather preclude telling the story of the east end through the ages. If you only deal with "living memory" this does preclude looking at the "broad picture" as it where.
The programme covers the "Moseleyite" Brown shirt marches, the dreadful war years, the 1950s, and 1960s and 1970s, but, of course, does not really deal with the history of the East End, but it does touch briefly (very, very briefly) on some of the heroes of the East End, including General Booth founder of the Salvation Army.
This programme is not a real vision of the East End Through the Ages, but a partial view of certain aspects of the East End.
Can I recommend it, however? Yes, I can. For even though the programme is flawed, it is still a good insight into some aspects of the East of yesterday and of today.
It should cost about a tenner.
There are no extras on this DVD, save for scene selection
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