Event: Life Writing Paul Hallam Remembered

Marking a year since the all too early death of screenwriter and essayist Paul Hallam in 2019, his friends, colleagues and creative collaborators will assemble to celebrate the life and work of this pioneering and much-missed writer.

Paul Hallam was a path-breaking working class maker, with a passionate commitment to those marginalised by mainstream society. He wrote Britain’s first gay feature film Nighthawks (Ron Peck, 1978) and its first Bangladeshi feature A Kind of English (Ruhul Amin, 1986). He was central to the engaged east London film and photography collective Four Corners, co-scripted Isaac Julien’s Cannes prize-winning debut feature Young Soul Rebels (1991) and authored a singular cultural history, The Book of Sodom (Verso, 1993).

In later years he lived in Istanbul and collaborated extensively with Abbas Nokhasteh on film and book works, including a new feature length documentary about Yilmaz Güney.

Featuring short films, feature extracts, sound recordings, conversation and recollection, the afternoon is free to attend and all are welcome. There will be contributions from Richard Taylor, Ron Peck, Bernard Walsh, Andrea Luka Zimmerman, Carla Mitchell, Stefan Dickers, Wilf Thust, Lasse Johansson, and Abbas Nokhasteh, among others. The event is organised by Gareth Evans. Thanks to all at BIMI.