Nighthawks
Director Ron Peck in conversation with Ian Giles

An audio recording of a conversation with Ron Peck and Ian Giles following the screening of Nighthawks on 1 March at LUX.

Nighthawks is set in a post-Stonewall and pre-AIDS London. In the evenings Jim, an out geography teacher hits the bars, where the dance floor becomes a space of lusty liberation, dispiriting ritual and social connections. Peck made Nighthawks with a cast of mostly non-professional actors, advertising for roles in newspaper classifieds. Jim’s worlds collide when he’s confronted by his students. When asked if he is “bent” Jim gives the schoolboys a resounding lesson in tolerance that still reverberates today.

The film is heralded as Britain’s first explicitly gay film made within the gay community. This quietly revolutionary film gives us one of cinema’s first complex, fully realised gay protagonists.

Supported by Jerwood Arts and Arts Council England