The Nightcleaners (1975)
3.5 of 5 from 45 ratings
1h 30min
- General info
- Available formats
- Synopsis:
"Nightcleaners" was made by Marc Karlin, Mary Kelly, James Scott, and Humphry Trevelyan. It was the perfect synthesis of their interests: Karlin was a filmmaker who had lived in Paris and had worked with Chris Marker; Kelly was an active participant in the women’s movement and an artist in the process of making her landmark piece Post-Partum Document (1973-79); Trevelyan, a filmmaker who had studied photography and anthropology, had with Karlin left another group, Cinema Action, to found the Berwick Street Film Collective; and Scott, a painter, had made innovative documentaries on artists like Richard Hamilton, David Hockney, and Claes Oldenburg, as well as the feature Adult Fun (1972), an experimental espionage thriller. The film is ostensibly a record of the attempts by the women’s movement to unionize the female night cleaners of London through a campaign begun in 1970, but the collective always intended it to be more than just a campaign film. With its extended sequences of black leader, slowed down and re-filmed footage, and montaged fragments of conversations, 'Nightcleaners' can claim to be that rare thing, simultaneously a formal experiment and a political film. It is at once committed to a particular struggle and a reflection on what it means to make an image of struggle. - Actors:
- Sally Alexander, Ann Burnett, May Hobbs, Marc Karlin, Jean Mormont, Sheila Rowbotham, James Scott, Humphrey Trevelyan
- Directors:
- Marc Karlin, Mary Kelly, James Scott, Humphrey Trevelyan
- Aka:
- Night Cleaners
- Genres:
- Documentary, Special Interest
