It’s been nearly 2 months since the Grenfell Tower fire. In this time 9 survivors, local residents and volunteers have felt compelled to make a film to dispel the public’s fear from the Lancaster West community and reveal the deep impact this has had on them as people.
‘The survivors are not statistics they are humans beings’, says Adrianne McKenzie, one of the film-makers who has been struck by the way the survivors are seen in terms of ‘what they can be given … not as people’. Film-maker and youth worker Nendie Pinto-Duschinsky supported the team of young film-makers and describes the film as ‘harrowing to make’ but the ‘articulacy, dignity and insight of the young people will change perceptions’. Young people lost their lives on the night running into the building to save people. We hope the film will transform the way the community are seen from ‘angry and un-relatable’ to the truth that they are ‘coping with their suffering by trying to help other people’. Their humanity and morality is the clear message.
The media has covered the story in ways that the local community are not satisfied with, the evening will touch in the disparity between eye witness accounts and the reporting of events as they unfold on national media as well as the dangerous spread of misinformation.
There will be a discussion after the film with the survivors of the tragedy and the film-makers to share their personal accounts of the fire, and how disasters like this are reported in the UK.
Joining the discussion will be the journalist Ed Vulliamy. Growing up in Notting Hill, Vulliamy has written regularly on the ruthless development of the area that has divided those living in West London. He regularly writes for the Guardian.
Watch Channel 4’s excerpt of the film here
Interviews with some of the young people in the film here
Speakers
Zoe Dainton and David Benjamin lived on the 4th Floor of Grenfell Tower where the fire started. ‘ We’re two of the lucky ones we survived, we got out. People feel lost right now, everyone’s walking round like zombies[…] Here round Latimer where Grenfell is everyone knew each other, was friendly with each other there wasn’t much trouble. It was nice, as a community we were quite close…Some kids are lucky that they won’t remember this apart from in pictures and videos. There was a girl who went to school the next day and done her GCSEs in her pyjamas, she’s going to remember that forever’.
Shona Harvey lives 5 minutes from Grenfell Tower and went to primary school with Zoe. ‘Ladbroke Grove was a special area for me to grow up in because it’s culturally diverse, and it’s home to one of the biggest street carnivals in the world, The Notting Hill Carnival’, Shoana says. ‘Even myself, I was sitting down with some friends in a cafe, we were talking about what’s going on but then you do pause and think, am I laughing too much? I do think to myself maybe I feel a little better… but then you watch more footage on the news and it hits me again and I can feel my emotions building up and you realise it’s still quite fresh’.
Adrianne McKenzie is a freelance film-maker who spent much of her youth in West London. She was making a film about the closure of Stowe Youth Club near to Grenfell Tower when the fire happened. She picked up her camera and began to record events from the first night. Struck by the de-humanisation of the survivors, spending time on the ground has revealed that ‘…no-one’s really talking much about the people apart from what they can be given. So these luxury apartments or £5,000 from the government… No ones really thought about them as people they are just statistics. I feel like the survivors have been forgotten about. People are fighting a lot for the deceased but not as hard for the people who are still here’.
Reece Yeboah lives underneath Grenfell Tower and sees it every morning. He is a fashion designer and young creative pursuing his dreams. He feels if Princess Diana was alive she would have come and helped the people of Grenfell. ‘My niece goes to nursery in Grenfell Tower so on the morning of the fire I took her to nursery.’ ‘We’re doing this because we’re a community and we’re doing it from our hearts but we shouldn’t have to, the council should be doing this’. I lost 4 or 5 friends in the tower, but it’s probably more, most people in the tower, I used to see them everyday.’
Pilgrim Tucker is a community organiser and campaigner. She has many years experience of working on projects aimed at amplifying the voices of local residents, service users and community members, supporting them to organise to influence decisions that affect them. She worked with Grenfell residents in 2015 to help them campaign against the refurbishment undertaken KCTMO and Rydon. Since the fire she has continued to work with residents on the Lancaster west estate that surrounds the tower.
There will be an optional donation (£5 + standard ticket) when you book. You can also donate optionally via paypal:
We will be accepting donations for the survivors of the fire who will be attending the evening. 20 million pounds was donated by the public to meet the emergency needs of the survivors, many of whom are still ill from the fire without regular food and basic clothing. The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea Council have imposed eligibility criteria which prevent or delay survivors claiming money in many cases. For example to receive the ‘Fresh Start’ grant of £10,000, survivors must be in permanent accommodation, which they are not.
Nearly all of the 250 families are in temporary accommodation as the permanent accommodation offered is unsuitable or not ready. The small percentage of donations that have been given out for the most part have been awarded to community organisations.
We would encourage you to donate to the fund at the screening to help them get on their feet during this uncertain period of their lives.
The Frontline Charitable Trust is a not-for-profit organisation.
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It was perhaps twenty minutes after the call to prayer had sounded and we were breaking the fast, sitting on the floor around a plastic sheet with plates of rice and meat, when I was knocked sideways to the ground.
It takes a split second till you realize what happened; the shock-wave had blown out the windows, sending the glass flying like shrapnel into the room. It was a miracle that no one was injured.
Our glass is double glazing, and glass kept on raining down the facade landing on our terrace, shattering into thousands of tiny pieces. There have been bomb blasts before that shook the ground, but nothing like this. I heard gunfire on the streets for several minutes, and I moved to the back rooms of the apartment with my friends. No pretty pictures this time, but I doubt I could have held the camera steady those first few minutes anyway.
Soon after the gunshots stopped, we walked out onto the terrace, glass crunching under our sandals and watched as police cars and ambulances rushed past towards the blast side. The air was filled with dust and a few blocks down I could the flashing lights and cars gathering. Quite soon after, a fire burst out, with flames and black smoke billowing into the sky – firefighters passed by.
The blast site was near to Sharjah Bakery, a shop I visit most days for soda and sweets. Just across the street is a wedding salon, and the NDS/intelligence services office is close by along with a private security company and a construction company. A friend called and said it might have been a bomb factory that blew up. Some 40 minutes later reports came in that it was a car bomb. Casualties kept arriving at Mirwais hospital for hours after the explosion. People were being dug out of the collapsed building. This morning the toll had risen to 43 dead and 65 injured.
My desk is littered with pieces of plaster that have fallen off from the ceiling and the window frames sit next to the wall.
30 minutes after the blast a convoy of foreign troops drove by, the unmistakable sound of their heavy vehicles roaring through the streets, followed by more ambulances.
Smoke kept on rising into the sky hours later, even though the firefighters seemed to have managed to put out the fires. Helicopters were flying overhead through the night sky.
Sitting in the now windowless living room last night talking with my Afghan friends, one turns to me and says: “There are those Afghans who migrated to the west who say they miss Afghanistan!” He bursts out into laughter. “This is what they are missing!” Another shakes his head: “Fuck Kandahar. Fuck Afghanistan.”
Around 11:00pm people were being evacuated from the Continental guesthouse. The police chief was talking about another 4 possible suicide bombers who were still at large in the city and heated discussion broke out in my apartment as to whether or not we should stay or move to another building further away from the Continental guesthouse and the main roads.
In the end we stayed. The idea that a truck bomb would drive into our building and explode seemed unrealistic at the time.
Now the next morning, the air is filled with the sound of people cleaning up broken glass on the street. The shopkeepers just opposite our building have all lost their glass windowfronts. I can see the blast sight; some buildings are missing, and the ones adjacent to the center of the explosion seem derelict, without windows or frames, just the empty carcasses left standing.
The area around the Shah Jahan Restaurant is a popular area, with many people spending their evenings on the little green grass strip in the middle of the road. Half an hour ago I drove to the blast site, and the destruction leaves little doubt that this has been Kandahar’s biggest bomb so far: entire buildings were annihilated and squares of mud huts flattened.
Sharjah Bakery is gone, the construction company reduced to a pile of bricks across the street from it. The restaurant itself collapsed, burying everyone inside underneath it.
Another friend called in and said he believed that the district chief of Khakrez was at the restaurant along with a number of government officials, but nothing is confirmed yet.
Emotions were running high yesterday, and security forces in town were quick to pull the trigger. Standing outside on the terrace waiting to being put through to CBC Radio for an interview, someone started firing his AK47, and a bullet whizzed past me, hitting the door and reaching as far as our living room.
A moment later CBC was on the phone:
“Tell us what is happening right now.”
“I’ve just been shot at…”
I did the interview anyway, even though I guess I must have been a little freaked out at the time, given the amount of swearwords I used.
In the end, though, no one is surprised. This is not a turning point or the start of something; it’s what has been happening all along for the past few years in Kandahar. Violence has been on the rise, and there is no security for the people of southern Afghanistan.
[This piece was written by Felix Kuehn.]
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