‘Hammersmith’ is a single-page animated poetryfilm, made in response to extracts from Sean O’Brien’s poem of the same name. A fluid picture of 1950’s London, it is drawn from the iconic cinematography of the 1952 film, ‘Night And The City’, a beautifully shot film noir directed by Jules Dassin. It fixes the landscape of 1950’s London in the imagination, but at the same time presents the streets and buildings of London as a dreamy, melting set, a backdrop to the constant shifts and changes in the lives and fortunes of its inhabitants.
In Kate Sweeney’s film London is presented as a character, as fluid and changeable as The river Thames itself as it flows under The Hammersmith Bridge.
Artist Kate Sweeney produces work that incorporates documentary, photography, drawing, video and animation. She is interested in video-making as collage, and how video transforms and translates materials. She often collaborates with writers, poets and musicians to produce video and animation work. She is an associate artist at Newcastle University, where she is helping to develop The Bloodaxe Digital Archive – a digital interface for the Bloodaxe poetry archive.
Sweeney’s videos and installations have exhibited internationally at numerous venues including the Sydney International Film Festival, the Zebra Film Festival, and the Southbank Poetry Festival. She was shortlisted for the 2014 Ted Hughes prize for New Works in Poetry. Kate has taught Fine Art, animation and lectured in poetry-film. She will begin an interdisciplinary practice-led PhD at Newcastle University in 2016.
Hammersmith was named Best International Film at Festival Silencio in Lisbon 2016.
