London Film-Makers' Co-op

The London Film-makers' Co-op, or LFMC, was a British film-making workshop founded in 1966. It ceased to exist in 1999 when it merged with London Electronic Arts to form LUX. [ [http://ftvdb.bfi.org.uk/sift/organisation/8307 BFI website, accessed May 4, 2008] ] For most of its life the LFMC was based in Gloucester Avenue in Camden in a run down building which for a number of years also housed the London Musicians Collective. In 1997 the LFMC moved to the new Lux Centre, Hoxton Square.

It grew out of film screenings at the "Better Books" bookstore, part of the 1960s counter-culture in London. [Christoph Grunenberg and Jonathan Harris, "Summer of Love: Psychedelic Art, Social Crisis and Counterculture in the 1960s", Liverpool University Press, 2005, p102. ISBN 0853239193] and was founded by, amongst others, Steve Dwoskin and Bill Cobbing, inspired by Jonas Mekas's The Film-Makers' Cooperative in New York. One difference between the New York Co-op and the LFMC was that the LFMC was organized as an egalitarian, worksharing cooperative, which assisted production as well as distribution. [David E. James and Rick Berg, "The Hidden Foundation: Cinema and the Question of Class", University of Minnesota Press, 1996, pp198-199. ISBN 0816627045]

It initially had close links with American experimental cinema. Dwoskin and Peter Gidal were ex-Factory artists and Carla Liss ran the co-op's distribution archive [A.L.Rees, "A History of Experimental Film and Video", 1999, BFI.]

Filmmakers associated with the group include Malcolm LeGrice, Peter Gidal [Bart J. Moore-Gilbert, "The Arts in the 1970s: Cultural Closure?", Routledge, 1994, p231. ISBN 0415099064] and William Raban, who managed the LFMC workshop from 1972 - 76. Sally Potter made several short films at the LFMC in the early 1970s. [Marsha MacCreadie, "Women Screenwriters Today: Their Lives And Words", Praeger/Greenwood, 2006, p63. ISBN 0275985423]

Work produced by members of the LFMC in the late 1960s and early 1970s has been labelled Structural Film. [ [http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/artistsfilm/programme4/structuralfilm.htm Tate Britain film programme, accessed May 4, 2008.] ]

References

External links

* [http://www.lfmc.org/ A history of the LFMC]
* [http://www.studycollection.co.uk/auralhistory/part2.htm British Artists' Film and Video Study Collection, interview with Steve Dwoskin and Bill Cobbing]