Co-op Dialogues 1966-2016: William Raban and Sarah Turner

2016 marks the 50th anniversary of the founding of the London Film-makers’ Co-operative (LFMC), a ground-breaking organisation that pioneered a tradition for the production, distribution, and exhibition of artists’ moving image in the United Kingdom. To mark this anniversary Tate Britain and LUX present a monthly series of screenings and artists’ conversations revisiting the legacy of the London Film-makers’ Co-op and its significance today.
Artist filmmaker William Raban (b. 1948) was a central figure of the LFMC, where he was Workshop organiser from 1972 to 1976. Initially known for his landscape and expanded cinema films of the 1970s, Raban’s landscape interests were framed in the 80s towards a more historical and socio-political context: the history of London and the Thames. Raban’s films from the 1990s onwards look at the island of Britain and its people, in the context of the global economy and the effects of urban change.
Sarah Turner (b. 1967) is an artist who writes and makes films. Her work spans single screen gallery pieces – rooted in the formal preoccupations of the avant-garde from which she emerged – to feature length projects that explore the interplay between abstraction and narration. Turner was a student of Raban’s at Saint Martins School of Art and was also involved with the LFMC, first as distribution officer and then as co-curator, with Jon Thomson, of the launch programme of the LUX cinema when the Co-op relocated to Hoxton Square in the late 1990s.
A selection of works by William Raban and Sarah Turner will be screened, followed by a conversation between the artists.