Posted on 24/07/12

Photo taken for Town magazine, 1967: (left to right) Stephen Dwoskin, Andy Meyer, Simon Hartog, Bob Cobbing and Harvey Matusow

Stephen Dwoskin (1939-2012), who sadly passed away in June, was one of the co-founders of the London Filmmakers Cooperative in 1966 and subsequently a key figure in experimental film in the UK. Having been an active filmmaker on the New York scene, he arrived in London in the winter of 1964 on the SS United States to discover the hopeful beginnings of a London experimental filmmaking scene when he met John 'Hoppy' Hopkins, co-founder of the notorious International Times, and poet Bob Cobbing, whose Cinema 61 was run out of the Charing Cross bookshop Better Books. In this interview with curator Rozemin Keshvani, which took place at his home in November 2011, Dwoskin relates the legendary start-up of the London Filmmakers Cooperative and the underground scene that emerged from Better Books.

Dwoskin's 1968 film Take Me is currently on show until 29 July at the exhibition Better Books: Art Anarchy and Apostasy at Flat Time House. His last film Age Is..., completed shortly before he died, has its premiere at the Locarno Film Festival in August and will screen at Tate Modern in the autumn.

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Stephen Dwoskin - Better Books was conveniently located where everyone could meet.

 

Rozemin Keshvani - How did you find out about it?

 

SD - Oh, because when I came over, after my first year. I came over, on a Fulbright Fellowship, I started looking around for something to do with film, cause I was in the New York Co-op (The Film-maker’s Cooperative) and the underground business in New York originally. So I thought, well I called up some people in New York, you see like Jonas Mekas, and asked them what was happening in London. Were there any places with films and things? He mentioned a few people, like Hoppy, who were doing things, and I decided to meet them to see what was going on. So he gave me the name of Better Books. I went down there. I had a car then.

 

RK - Did you meet Tony Godwin then, the owner of Better Books?

 

SD - I didn’t know who owned Better Books, but there were two shops. There was Better Books in front, and there was the paper back section of Better Books which was just behind the main street. It was actually on the side street, which is not there anymore. It’s a pedestrian thing now. I mean the paperback section was in the back part attached to Better Books, the main store. Bob Cobbing was managing the paper back section. He was just managing the paperback shelf, and because he was a poet himself, he’d conduct poetry readings. A lot of the independent publishers and poetry people always had poetry readings in the shop.

 

SD - I wasn’t really involved with the writers, but there were a lot of writers there. I mean Bob Cobbing used to have his readings there. Gosh I never went to the poetry readings myself. But all sorts of people met there anyway. There were always notices up there. He used to put all these notices of whatever actions were going on in London at the time. I think J.G. Ballard went there, and Michael Moorcock. They were doing science fiction magazines. The guy who started the Fulcrum Press, he always was there. There were two bookshops in London at the time.

 

SD - This was just up from Better Books. I can’t remember the name. A lot of people were passing through London in those days, a lot of people from New York. They would go there.

 

RK - Okay so this led you to Better Books. So how did you meet your fellow co-conspirators ‘in arms’ to create the London Filmmakers Co-op?

 

SD - The main catalyst for me was a guy called Simon Hartog.

 

RK - He was an American, wasn’t he? What was he doing there at the time?

 

SD - He was thought to be American, he was British. Everyone thought he was American because he had an American accent. He was educated in Chicago, but he was British, actually. He had a British passport, but he was always thought to be American because of his accent. I’m not quite sure how I met him. Oh, I think I met people just by being there. Because, it was a very small crowd.

 

SD - Bob Cobbing ran a film society there. It was a co-op, a little club. It might pop into my head, but it was a little film society there. That’s where I met Simon as well. They would go to the film society and he would put on films. He usually got them from the BFI.

 

RK - So what was screened there? Kenneth Anger’s Scorpio Rising?

 

SD - Yeah, there were a few films in London from the New York crowd that were left here in 64, at then end of 64. Cause they were shown in the Belgian experimental film in Knokke (Festival Exprmntl in Knokke-le-Zoute). There were lot of films, not a lot, a few films were not allowed back into America. They were kept in London by various people, the prints you see. I think one or two of them were left with Bob, one or two of them, the prints, because Better Books was known to be a meeting place.

 

SD - So, everything was done on trust, and there were people, like John Latham, people who knew people from America. People like Yoko Ono were in London. There were a lot of Americans, particularly in London, at the time. A lot were here because of Vietnam, and the protests. A lot of Americans were travelling also through London to do film shows around Europe. It went from New York to London and then it would go from London to tour around Europe, sometimes, like P Adam Sitney, from New York brought a lot of films with him. When P Adams came to London, he was also looking for a place, because he was carrying the New American Cinema with him; he was looking for a place to possibly show in London. Nobody knew about this stuff in London, or England for that matter.

 

RK - So Bob jut said, ‘put it down in the basement’?

 

SD - Yeah. Lots of things happened in the basement.

 

RK - So, how did you get down in the basement?

 

SD - I only went down once or twice, that’s why I didn’t see a lot of things. I didn’t see that much down there because I was on crutches then. I went down for the ‘famous photograph’, which was published in Town magazine, when the Co-op started, but it was very hard.

 

RK - Do you have that photograph?

 

SD - No, I never had the photograph. I never had a copy except the magazine.² I don’t know where the magazine went to. There was another American guy there in the picture whose name I can’t remember now. But it was Simon’s idea to start the Co-op out of the film society.

 

RK - Had Simon had any familiarity with the American Co-op?

 

SD - I was the main. Of course, he knew of it. He had spent a lot of time in Chicago so he knew a lot about what was happening. Simon was very involved in the politics of cinema. He had studied film at the Royal College of Art, a special one year course. Simon was more of a political creature. We talked about the co-op in New York. I had brought my own films with me when I came over so it was just an idea to try to start something in London.

 

SD - I think it was people like Yoko Ono was over. She was around Better Books too. She had a lot of experience with the Fluxus people in New York. So she had made films you see. One or two of the film critics like Craig Deerdat and another guy called Phillip Crick – they were film writers. They were interested. It was just one of those kinds of things that happened because everyone was there at the time and the spirit of the times was rather influenced by the Americans, particularly cinema thing cause there was nothing going on here.

 

RK - So, who in the American scene were the big influences then? The Americans? Andy Warhol?

 

SD - No, Warhol was later really. It’s a mistake about Warhol. Warhol had made a couple of films, but they weren’t known. He didn’t get known until late 66, 67, Warhol, in America. His films weren’t very well known in England. The most notorious film that was known at the time was Jack Smith’s Flaming Creatures. That was the big controversial film. That was one of the films that were left in London after the 64 Exprmntl Film Festival in Belgium. Cause that was a banned film in America. They burnt it every time, they got hold of it. I knew Jack Smith in New York, you see. I had seen the film in New York originally. It was one of the films that were presented at -- They smuggled it into Belgium to be shown at this Exprmntl Film Festival where it caused an incredible controversy. I would say, in terms of films, the Exprmntl Film Festival in Belgium was the catalyst. You see cause it brought together into Europe a lot of the New American Cinema. That was the winter of 64.

 

RK - And you were there for that?

 

SD - No, no, I was there for the following one. I had just come over. I was a graphic designer originally.

 

RK - So you were working in graphic design in the States?

 

SD - Yeah, I came over to do research for book design really. One of the other reasons for going to Better Books, because I was on a project to redesign books. It kinda’ all just happened because we just happened to be there. It wasn’t planned. Things fell into place. London was making a big change in the 60s under Wilson’s government. There was just a lot of freedom going on. It was a very interesting place, London, because it was very poor. No one had telephones then, of course there were no mobiles, no computers, or anything. The only form of communication was hanging around pubs or other places like the bookshops. You couldn’t call up someone in London. I didn’t have a telephone. It took six months to get an installation. Even refrigerators were a luxury then. I didn’t have a refrigerator for years.

 

RK - So you used the window sill and the pantry.

 

SD - I didn’t have a TV set. I got my first TV set from a friend in Scotland. We were all living in front of heaters. It was quite primitive. The main form of communication was a couple of pubs.

 

RK - Well, it was face to face. You had to go and see people.

 

SD - Yeah, you had to see people. The only quick way of communication was sending post-cards. You had three mail deliveries in those days. So if you sent a post-card early enough, you could meet someone the next day. Post-cards was the big way, but the easiest way was to hang out -- hang out at places where you’d meet people. And so it was Better Books for the arts. But there were always little events going on there. There was also the People Show.

 

RK - That was Jeff Nuttall? He started that People Show?

 

SD - Yeah, he was a friend of Bob Cobbing. So Bob Cobbing knew all these people because everyone kind of drifted in and out of the bookshop. So he decided to put on all these little shows. So, he provided a facility.

 

SD - Around the same time, about a year later, there was the beginning of the Arts Lab, which became competition for Better Books.

 

RK - Who was behind the Arts Lab?

 

SD - Well that’s a controversial story because there was a guy called Jim Haynes...

 

SD - It was interesting politically. Even when I came over, the American Embassy asked me to be a spy, you see. There was a lot of government involvement secretly in a lot of these activities because the art people were moving around a lot. They wanted people to kind of inform them of what was happening, who was moving where. You see everyone was in transit in those days. Even the BaadeRK -Meinhof people were coming into London at the time from Germany. The political people and the counteRK -culture people and the film people all were criss-crossing.

 

RK - Everyone was intermingling? The ideas were percolating and intermingling? So they were asking people to infiltrate and become spies?

 

SD - They were asking Americans. I was taken to the U.S. Embassy when I first got here and they said– would I be an informant, which I refused. But the Arts Lab, as far as I know, was started by …

 

RK - They didn’t mind that you refused?

 

SD - No, what could they do? Ah, what could they do? But, they were watching me anyway. Even the British police were watching me. Everyone was watching each other. It was very weird. You see a lot of American arts were supported, like the Abstract Expressionists. Their exhibitions around Europe were paid for by the US government.

 

RK - Yeah, yeah, absolutely. There was a meeting of minds there wasn’t there?

 

SD - Yeah, but I was naive. And I just-- I happened to live in Notting Hill Gate at the time.

 

RK - John Latham would have lived close by? Loads of the people in the underground were living there.

 

SD - Yeah, he was living up the street. Hoppy lived just off Notting Hill Gate.

 

RK - So what year were you living in Notting Hill Gate?

 

SD - I was living there all the way up until the 80s. I lived at Elgin Crescent which was just off Portobello Road. Then I moved up Ladbroke Grove. Even Hockney lived up there. I mean, at that time, Notting Hill Gate was one of the centres for art which is now in East London.

 

RK - There were a lot of squatters in Notting Hill weren’t there at the time, and run down buildings?

 

SD - Yeah, but more up in Hampstead. Hampstead was another centre, but it was more up market. But Notting Hill was full of writers, lots of writers. Michael Moorcock lived on Ladbroke Grove as well. Some of the poets lived around Westbourne Grove, around that area, and Portobello Road.

 

RK - Was William Burroughs living anywhere around there?

 

SD - Yeah, he was nearby. I don’t know exactly where. But there were a couple of pub around there where everyone met. The one I used to go to was called Henekeys.³ The other one was Finches on Portobello Road which was a meeting place for the artists. I was also teaching at this time too. I was teaching at the London College of, now ‘Communications’. Then it was the ‘London College of Printing’. I used to go with a few of the students. I wasn’t much older than the students anyway. Students were providing the way for what was going on too.

 

RK - So, were you teaching film, or were you teaching graphic design?

 

SD - It was design, but again, there wasn’t very much going on in film at all. I was considered quite unique. I think the first business before the Co-op began was that Hoppy that ran a little festival in Notting Hill Gate. They asked if I would do, on a Wednesday, a film show, a film night show. Cause I had films. And I said yes – cause I lived there. It was at the Mercury Theatre.

 

RK - The Mercury Theatre!⁴ Oh right, okay, that was in Notting Hill. A lot of crazy avant-garde took place there didn’t it? I think that’s where John Latham’s first screened his Juliette and Romeo, that sort of expanded cinema piece.

 

SD - Yes, it was also where the Ballet Rambert was based. I guess you could say there was an amorphic community going on there. Everyone bumped into each other somehow. Everything was face-to-face. You had to go to Henekeys or Finches, cause there was no place else to hang out. The winters were cold. No one had heating. I went to the pub every day. Everyday you’d go to the pub after dinner to get a drink or two. You’d just absorb each other because it was very very friendly in those days. Totally, unlike London is today. It was very warm. People were like ‘people’, so to speak. You didn’t have any other way of communicating. It was face-to-face. So if you had any interests, you would talk to someone. People always approached each other, say, ‘What do you do?’, ‘Who are you?’ ‘Want a drink?’ It was very open. Even Barry Flanagan lived near there at that time. There were a lot of artists, writers.

 

RK - Was Hoppy living out there at that time?

 

SD - He was living a little further. Hoppy lived towards Holland Park in a flat, but it was walking distance to the centre of Notting Hill Gate. He was living there too -- cause Portobello Road was sort of big, everyone would bump into each other on Fridays or Saturdays on Portobello Road.

 

RK - So the Portobello Road, Westbourne Grove area—that was the big scene. Tell me about this Notting Hill Festival. How did you choose your films, and...

 

SD - I knew Hoppy. I was trying to figure out how I knew Hoppy, but I don’t remember how. He asked me to put on the Wednesday night of film. So I said ‘yes’. He somehow got a projector, and I did it, I just put the show on. I think it’s there where I met Simon. I think he came along to the festival. Hoppy also was running a newspaper then. The first issues of Time Out came out then. Time Out was a little flyer. It was like a little mimeographed thing of what was happening in the area.

 

RK - In the area, yeah, the scene, cause I know about the about the International Times. There was Alexander Trocchi. There was My Own Mag which I think was Jeff Nuttall. Then, he put something together, which I think was this...

 

SD - I thought Hoppy did IT, the International Times – yeah, that was the one, in my recollection, was connected with him. He got in a lot of trouble for that newspaper. They used to distribute it on Portobello Road. They would just stand around distributing it. The police would move you off, cause they used to use a law called, ‘Blocking a public footpath’ – so if you stood still...

 

RK - So you had to keep walking back and forth?

 

SD - Yeah, you had to keep walking. The police had all kinds of tricks. I don’t think the police knew what to do with all of us.

 

RK - One wonders why they bothered. Why did they bother?

 

SD - I don’t know. I guess they were...There were a lot of political aspects to it. There was very – The newspapers called us ‘anarchists’. The British were quite worried about these kinds of social changes. George Orwell once said, ‘The British don’t like to change very much’... They didn’t know what to make of it, basically. So they all were watching. I had a lot of students that were arrested cause the police would get you for, mostly about drugs.

 

RK - Well there was a lot of drugs definitely at that time.

 

SD - There is more out there now than there were then. It was kinda harmless anyway most of the time. But the police were planting a lot of drugs on people. There was a strange law – I remember that at the Finches, if you walked three feet away from the pub holding a glass of beer, they would get you for stealing the glass.

 

RK - Really. They just wanted to...

 

SD - Yeah, it was a form of harassment. I had to go to court to be character witness for students at the time, when they were picked up for carrying offensive weapons, which happened to be a ‘penny’.

 

RK - A what?

 

SD - A penny. The old English penny was very big. The old Victorian penny was very big.

 

RK - So how was that a weapon?

 

SD - Well you could throw it at someone and hurt them. Therefore it was an offensive weapon.

 

RK - Right...

 

SD - I think the average person broke thirteen laws a day in London. Technically, even having a wheel chair was illegal.

 

RK - Really?

 

SD - Yeah, well you weren’t allowed to have four wheels on the pavement.

 

RK - Of course, exactly. Wow, that’s pretty rough.

 

SD - I had students who were... most of my students were design students, but they used to carry these knives for cutting their work, you know, Stanley knives. But they were picked up for carrying Stanley knives as an offensive weapon.

 

RK - Anything really.

 

SD - Anything. The police activity even though it was small and petty, helped fuel things, especially when Hoppy got arrested.

 

RK -When did he get arrested or what did he get arrested for?

 

SD - Just after the Festival. They planted a woman, a policewoman in the flat above his. They caught him with pot. She made a relationship with him and they picked him up. But then his arrest pulled a lot of people together to his support, you see. He was known of course because of the Festival and IT magazine. So, everyone rallied. Everyone knew about. The festival showed the films and during the festival, an American came, a guy called Harvey Matusow. I don’t know if you’ve come across that name?

 

RK - No I haven’t at all.

 

SD - He claims he started the Co-op, by the way. But he was an FBI agent.⁵ And he had some films with him too, which I put on. But his films were leftovers of Jack Smith’s films, which I recognised, cause I knew Jack Smith.

 

RK - Right, so then you are saying... I’m sorry, you can’t be...

 

SD - Yeah, so I am trying to figure out how he got these pieces of film. They were like collage film with pieces of an incomplete film by Jack Smith.

 

RK - Was he saying they were his, or he just brought them over? Was he saying he was the artist, Harvey was the artist?

 

SD - Yeah... He was saying he would help us start a Co-op, if we.... So I met Simon then. I remember Simon and I driving up to where this guy Harvey Matusow was, cause he said he had a projector with all this stuff. He did have all this equipment. But he came over on the SS United States. We travelled by ship in those days. I came over on a ship.

 

RK - Did you come over on a passenger line?

 

SD - A passenger line.

 

RK - It was a passenger line, okay.

 

SD - In any case, Harvey Matusow had all this equipment, but he came first class on the SS United States, so he must have had money. And he had an address book with everyone’s address in London.

 

SD - Really. Did you start putting two and two together, at all?

 

SD - I called in on my old agent in New York, who was called Emile de Antonio. He was a filmmaker but no one knows him here. He was a filmmaker who made political films in America. He was also my design agent. I have a book on him. They made a book about de Antonio. But he did a BBC programme about Harvey Matusow which was about how Matusow worked for the FBI. So, I called, from London, de Antonio, to find out more about Matusow and he knew everything about him. That he was an FBI agent. That he had worked for the McCarthy period people turning in artists in the anti-communist thing in America in the 50s. So he knew all about the artists. A lot of the designers were investigated by the FBI, especially American designers in New York whom I knew quite well. The Americans knew Matusow was an agent, but the British didn’t believe it. He’s dead now. In any case, he had this equipment and some of these films with him. No one ever questioned where he got the films from, but by projection he probably got it from the FBI. In any case, it was then we decided to discuss with Bob and people to do this, to try and do a co-op like the New York Co-op.

 

RK - The other name I’ve heard is Andy Meyer. Was he involved?

 

SD - Yes, he was American. He made a film called Night Crawlers. I remember that film. I don’t know much about him actually. He was at Better Books and he had a film. So the whole point of the Co-op was to show anybody’s films, not making any judgements on whether it was good or bad, or what the genre was. The policy of the Co-op was to have a place where the membership was filmmakers and they could show their work without any criteria about whether the work was good or bad. There was no censorship. And any style would go.

 

RK - So where did you screen all your films then in the beginning?

 

SD - At Better Books. We had a big meeting. It was October 66. Some of the British filmmakers, or the British filmmakers ‘to be’, were there at the meeting too, but the British filmmakers like Malcolm Le Grice. The other British filmmaker who had made films was a friend of Simon’s -- they went to school together -- was David Larcher.

 

SD - I remember the meeting at Better Books. It was not in the basement. We had a section of the Bookshop.

 

RK - This was October '66?

 

SW- Yeah, They had already a division between the American attitude which Simon was the speaker. Simon was the speaker. I was behind the throne. Simon was the front man really. But the British filmmakers said, ‘well if we join the Co-op, what could the Co-op provide for us?’

 

RK - Right, so they had this idea of what – funding? That they were gonna get funding somehow from the Co-op?

 

SD - They wanted funding. They were used to how the art schools worked. You belong to something, you get everything free, which the Americans are not used to. So this was a big argument, dispute. We had nothing except to show the films.

 

RK - So one attitude was say more independent? Or the American attitude was more independent, we will just do it ourselves, that somehow we’ll scrape it together?

 

SD - Yeah, and also the American idea was not only that every filmmaker member would have the right to show their work, but it was also to promote it and provide propaganda, like start a magazine, or get people aware of the films through forms of promotion, which meant that any money received in the American part would be used for publication, again to write about the films, distribute the publication, to provide a catalyst to the public about the new cinema, otherwise they wouldn’t.... the British attitude was, use any of the money to buy equipment and make workshops.

 

RK - So that was maybe less inclusive, or less?

 

SD - It had to do with the economy really. In America, people could buy their own camera in America. There was more money in America.

 

RK - Right.

 

SD - Here, no one had anything. So they wanted the equipment to make films and wanted workshops and things. The little money that was available from distribution either would go to publication or to equipment...

 

RK - That was the tension?

 

SD - That was the tension. Because the Americans thought, oh well, if you’re gonna make films, you’re gonna make them anyway. But the point is to get it seen. For the British it was to get the equipment to make the films in the first place. See that was the slight difference. But all the American filmmakers had their own cameras and stuff. The British filmmakers didn’t. So the different background based on the economy caused the problems and the historical differences. Because every filmmaker in New York had their own camera, had projectors and whatever, so the equipment wasn’t the priority, but getting publicity.

 

RK - The priority was the distribution, the network, developing an audience?

 

SD - The Co-op decided to print a magazine, which was called Cinim [the first three issues of Cinim are now available through the LUX website]. ‘C’ ‘I’ ‘N’ ‘I’ ‘M’. It was one of Simon’s words. He had a thing about making up words. Philip Crick was one of the writers. He was the editor. I was the designer of Cinim.

 

RK - So you did the designing of the Cinim magazine?

 

SD - Yeah, but it wasn’t much to design, the first issue was really stapled together. I did the cover.

 

RK - So where did you print it?

 

SD - We printed it on a duplicating machine.

 

RK - You had a...It was one at Better Books?

 

SD - Yeah, it was one at Better Books. They were called Gestetners.

 

RK -  Gestetner machine? Yeah, yeah. So Bob had one of those?

 

SD - Yeah, for doing flyers. It was printed on one page and then we stapled together. The second issue we had it printed by then we had a little more money. But no one had any grants.

 

RK - Arts Council money?

 

SD - Not for film anyway.

 

RK - Not for film, yeah.

 

SD - In fact film was never, there was a big confusion with the Arts Council years later because they didn’t know how to deal with film as an art or a commercial product.

 

RK - It took a bit longer here didn’t it to recognise film as...

 

SD - An art form. Yeah. Yeah, it took quite a bit longer. So basically that’s how it was. The first meeting was deciding all these things so we had the arguments about equipment, the magazine. We decide to go ahead with the magazine. And that’s when the Arts Lab came into play. Cause the Arts Lab started their own co-op.

 

RK - Right okay.

 

SD- Jim Haynes, who ran the Arts Lab, got David Curtis to do the film part of the Arts Lab which was a year after we started. The Arts Lab sort of provided facilities you see. They had money from somewhere.

 

SD- But they had a whole building. But also Bob was getting in trouble at that time. We had so much activity going on at Better Books that whoever owned Better Books; I don’t know, you might know his name.

 

RK - Tony Godwin.

 

SD- Yeah, yeah, Bob -- he decided he had to stop all of this, or else he’d lose his job. And that’s what eventually happened.

 

RK - Okay, but he still did work with Better Books even though he was no longer Manager?

 

SD- Yeah, but they wouldn’t have the activities. I know Bob wanted to get a bookshop of his own on Long Acres. That was scuppered by someone who was working with the Arts Lab.

 

RK - Who was that?

 

SD - I’m trying to remember his name. I remember what he looks like. He was our accountant. But he joined, he shifted from us ...and, and now they. It’s a funny story but it’s very real. Bob found an empty shop on Long Acres but the Arts Lab was also on Long Acres, but further up the street. The night before Bob was to sign the contract for the lease, (I’ll remember his name one day) because he had the keys to the place, because he was doing all the business for everybody-- threw a party in this shop to be the new Co-op and it disturbed all the neighbours. So they were complaining the next day and the lease was stopped.

 

RK - Oh, I see, so you think he did this on purpose? Or you think it was rather ‘timely’?

 

SD - Well, it’s overtly coincidental.

 

RK - Right okay.

 

SD - So we had to move all the films and the co-op stuff to Bob’s flat which was in Maida Vale. By this point, Ray Durgnat became part of the Co-op. He became President after me. Every year, we changed who is the President. But we had to distribute from Bob’s flat up in Maida Vale. I believe it was Maida Vale. We did that for close to a year, out of that place. Eventually, but in the meantime, the Arts Lab had started its own Co-op.

 

RK - Under Jim?

 

SD - Well under Dave Curtis really -- so for about a year, there were two co-ops, which was confusing everybody. So we, eventually, for practical reasons, joined with the other one.

 

RK- Okay and then the London Film-makers Co-op moved completely to the Arts Lab?

 

SD - Yeah.

 

RK- And then basically there was the separation from Better Books?

 

SD - Yeah, Better Books was eventually closed down. So everything was run from the Arts Lab after that. And then the Co-op itself moved from the Arts Lab itself to its own premises, which was in an old milk factory, a milk building warehouse, yeah a milk factory – milk bottling plant in Kentish town. And then from there it moved to another building in the same area, but it was way upstairs. I could never get into it. You had to go up a fire escape, like the ‘shortness dream’. I left after that, right after it left the dairy factory. Because, it became very sectarian. They began to select films.

 

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