Portobello Film Festival
Timber's Weekend Excursions No. 45:Westbourne Studios and the Portobello Film Festival
Westbourne Studios is the oddest building. It's the kind of place you can spend several hours in and still end up sitting there asking "what does it all MEAN?". The idea seems to be to cover several dozen completely different functions at once, meanwhile befuddling pretty much everyone as to what on earth the final goal is and what route it intends to take to get there.
In that sense it is not totally unlike the Barbican. Or the Centre Pompidou. Or in fact my career.
From the outside I was fairly sure it was an office block. Once inside, it briefly became the vast entry hall of a 1960s sixth form college. I was just getting my head round this when I realised that in fact it was a particularly spacious art gallery. Now admittedly the beer did not help my comprehension of the building. It's not even that I had very much, it was more the fact that the hall had turned into a bar for long enough that I could actually get a beer. It had definitely been an art gallery when I came in. However, it was noticeable the more you walked across the floor, the more it became a bar. First the occasional stool dotted around, then a pool table and a babyfoot casually placed in the middle of nowhere, and then more frequent stools and tables until you were very definitely in a bar. Or a student union at the very least.
Then I turned right and was promptly in a cinema watching some shorts by the Kourtrajmé company, which was basically Matthieu Kassovitz and Vincent Cassel messing about with some mates from the neuf trois. Lightly amusing. Worth catching considering it was free. Unfortunately we missed the film we were supposed to see, although we met the director of it, which led to conversation that can be described as fitful. In my defence it's difficult to concentrate on watching the right film when you still haven't understood what building you are in.
The roof that you see there in the photo - the concrete bit - is not in fact a roof at all. It's the A40(M).
Next week on Timber's Weekend Excursions: Scotland.
In that sense it is not totally unlike the Barbican. Or the Centre Pompidou. Or in fact my career.
From the outside I was fairly sure it was an office block. Once inside, it briefly became the vast entry hall of a 1960s sixth form college. I was just getting my head round this when I realised that in fact it was a particularly spacious art gallery. Now admittedly the beer did not help my comprehension of the building. It's not even that I had very much, it was more the fact that the hall had turned into a bar for long enough that I could actually get a beer. It had definitely been an art gallery when I came in. However, it was noticeable the more you walked across the floor, the more it became a bar. First the occasional stool dotted around, then a pool table and a babyfoot casually placed in the middle of nowhere, and then more frequent stools and tables until you were very definitely in a bar. Or a student union at the very least.
Then I turned right and was promptly in a cinema watching some shorts by the Kourtrajmé company, which was basically Matthieu Kassovitz and Vincent Cassel messing about with some mates from the neuf trois. Lightly amusing. Worth catching considering it was free. Unfortunately we missed the film we were supposed to see, although we met the director of it, which led to conversation that can be described as fitful. In my defence it's difficult to concentrate on watching the right film when you still haven't understood what building you are in.
The roof that you see there in the photo - the concrete bit - is not in fact a roof at all. It's the A40(M).
Next week on Timber's Weekend Excursions: Scotland.
posted by Timber @ 12:39 AM
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