A short series of films of Leicester and Nottingham Mods are currently being created by Arch Creative. The first film features Former Newark and Nottingham Mod Alan Fletcher, who was a story consultant on the cult film Quadrophenia and wrote the novel of the same name.
Alongside Arch Creative, young people from Soft Touch Arts and students from DeMontfort University are helping to produce the films.
View Alan’s story about the Mod Scene in Nottingham and his reflections about his involvement with Quadrophenia. Keep a look out for the next films coming up in the series.
The first teenage generation free from national service had a new found freedom – sexually, socially and creatively. Leicester was only 100 miles away from London where the epicentre of this global revolution was happening, and this ideology was seeping through.
With a working title of Hometown, this hour long documentary highlights some of the creatives who emerged from Leicester during the 1960s. Many of these characters were forward thinking modernists and now the filmmakers want to discover what is was about the sixties period, these people and life in Leicester that kickstarted this development. Bringing their stories to a new audience, the film will feature creatives including:
Joe Orton
Trailblazing playwright and “subversive genius.”
Engelbert Humperdinck
Singer who’s sold over 150 million records worldwide.
Sue Townsend
The biggest selling author of the 1980’s and “one of Leicester’s first Modernists” who began writing in the sixties.
Colin Wilson
Philosopher, writer and ‘Angry Young man’ who wrote The Outsider.
Graham Chapman
Actor and writer of groundbreaking comedy Monty Python.
The documentary will incorporate talking heads interviews and archive footage of Leicester during the sixties. This will contrast against the Leicester of today and will be set against a soundtrack of Leicester based musicians.
The project is partly funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund and is being produced by Leicester based design agency Arch Creative headed up by Joe Nixon and Ben Bradshaw. Arch are working with young people from Soft Touch Arts, Leicester College and DeMontfort University with an interest in film-making, to be actively involved in all stages of production and editing.
The film will be screened at Phoenix Cinema and be hosted on the Shaping a Generation website later in the year.
Students of Babington Academy are working on a film using inspiration from quotes taken from interviews with original Mods. Filming is about to start on three linked short films. The finished films will be screened in the Modified exhibition and also projected onto the outside of Soft Touch Arts.
We’d love to hear from you. Email us on hello@shapingageneration.co.uk
