‘a ROLE to PLAY’ screens at the 67 The International Short Film Festival Oberhausen
![](https://i0.wp.com/blogs.shu.ac.uk/c3riimpact/files/2021/05/Photo-27-04-2021-22-01-42.jpg?resize=860%2C280&ssl=1)
![](https://i0.wp.com/blogs.shu.ac.uk/c3riimpact/files/2021/05/film-screening-flyer.jpg?resize=218%2C300&ssl=1)
Newham Trades Council online film screening flyer
The film experiments with methods of co-creation, radical documentary theatre and oral testimony, with project participants storytelling privileged over the questioning/answering scenario of traditional documentary. The title echoes the participatory film process, and also the roles everyone takes in their working and non-working lives.
![](https://i0.wp.com/blogs.shu.ac.uk/c3riimpact/files/2021/05/3.A_Role_To_Play-Serena.jpg?resize=400%2C225&ssl=1)
Serena by Esther Johnson
Made in direct response to the increasing numbers of unemployment and zero-hour contracts across the UK, the film explores the realities and struggles that some residents of Bolsover have encountered in gaining and sustaining employment amidst the town’s post-mining legacy of deindustrialisation.
We hear the lived experiences and dreams of town residents including Dennis Skinner who remembers in terms of starting in parliament, “1970. I got elected, and six o’clock the day after I went to work. I didn’t have two ha’pennies to rub together. I hadn’t got a bank account. I hadn’t got a car. I went to work because I didn’t know when I was going to get paid in Parliament. Nobody sent me a letter saying turn up on such and such a day. I just had to keep looking in the papers to see when swearing in started. So I kept going to the pit.’
![](https://i0.wp.com/blogs.shu.ac.uk/c3riimpact/files/2021/05/2.A_Role_To_Play-Dennis_Skinner.jpg?resize=400%2C225&ssl=1)
Dennis Skinner by Esther Johnson
You must be logged in to post a comment.