Dams, factories, mines, power stations, railways (and more) in 130 years of industrial architecture as cinematic stage
About the presentation
What happens when the ‘irresistible force’ of film director meets the often ‘immovable object’ of industrial architecture?
Ever since cinema’s first film in 1895 – when the doors of the Lumière factory were flung open – industrial architecture has been cinema’s stage, and not merely as a passive platform on which actors perform.
This immersive, cinematic exploration will illustrate how industrial architecture (as a dynamic ‘antagonist’) has ended up 'adapting' some of cinema's most accomplished directors in order to create: utopias, dystopias, supernatural ‘zones’, camouflaged pasts and enigmatic futures, located in mountainscapes, waterscapes, cityscapes, factoryscapes and travelscapes.
A ‘sequel’ to Cambridge Industrial Archaeology Group’s March 2025 and April 2025 events about the film industry.
Featuring (geolocated) industrial architecture and ‘cautionary tales’ in the filmography of some of cinema's most influential filmmakers (as ranked in BFI’s Sight & Sound 2022 industry poll), including (in alphabetical order):
Chantal Ackerman | Theo Angelopoulos | Michelangelo Antonioni | Wang Bing | James Cameron & Gale Anne Hurd | Sergei Eisenstein | Jean-Luc Godard | Alfred Hitchcock | Stanley Kubrick | Krzysztof Kieślowski | Akira Kurosawa | Fritz Lang | Louis Lumière | Chris Marker | Andrey Tarkovsky | Dziga Vertov (David and Mikhail Kaufman & Yelizaveta Svilova).
To screen extracts from Operation Concrete (Jean-Luc Godard) licensed from Actua Films, which features European Route of Industrial Heritage site Grande Dixence Dam:
Also to feature (unpublished) documents, location photography and industrial archaeology of Beckton gasworks, courtesy of The Stanley Kubrick Archive | The University of the Arts, London | Warner Bros.
About the presenter
Dr Gordon Davies supports philanthropic activities at Cambridge Museum of Technology (UK), a member of the European Route of Industrial Heritage and the Association for Industrial Archaeology.
The museum includes collections about Robert William Paul, an industrialist who was also a pioneer of early cinema.
Gordon’s recent filming projects have included a ‘twinning’ project with Industrial Gas Museum, Technopolis City of Athens for an Association for Industrial Archaeology workshop: The Architecture of Industry.
Accessibility: an in-person presentation (audio-video) in English (UK) with select on-screen captions
Photo credit: Grande Dixence Dam (Switzerland) by Actua Films (2024), commissioned by Gordon Davies for European Route of Industrial Heritage | Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial
Admission information
Tickets for this in-person presentation (no online broadcast) are available: in advance (e-ticket)
Or on the door (cash or card) for £5 a head, £3 for students. Members and Volunteers of Cambridge Museum of Technology can attend for free.
The talk will take place in the Pye Building at Cambridge Museum of Technology.
Entrance on the night is via the Museum’s Cheddars Lane (upper) gate.
There will be free light refreshments courtesy of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers (IMECHE).
About Cambridge Industrial Archaeology Group (CIAG)
CIAG organises a programme of talks on industrial heritage at Cambridge Museum of Technology during spring-summer (March-June) and autumn (September-December) when talks usually take place at 7.30pm on the second Monday of each month (check website for confirmation). For further information about Cambridge Industrial Archaeology Group contact Robin Chandler.
Proceeds from CIAG meetings support the work of Cambridge Museum of Technology (UK registered charity 1156685), the home of Cambridge’s industrial heritage.
For further information on the Museum contact: info@museumoftechnology.com