Create’s Hitchcock’s East End series presents Blackmail with live musical accompaniment from the Forest Philharmonic and an introduction by Neil Brand in the art deco splendour of Walthamstow Assembly Hall
On 25th July at the Walthamstow Assembly Hall, Create and the Barbican will present the fourth in the year-long series of Hitchcock’s East End screenings and events, the silent version of Alfred Hitchcock’s 1929 film Blackmail with live musical accompaniment from the Forest Philharmonic conducted by Timothy Brock, performing the 2012 score written by Neil Brand, who will also introduce the evening.
The event kicks off Walthamstow Council’s Get Together summer events programme, which includes the Walthamstow Garden Party (Saturday 26 and Sunday 27 July) a free weekend of music, theatre, arts and crafts, food and family activities in Lloyd Park presented by the Barbican and Create London in partnership with Waltham Forest Council.
Blackmail (1929) is based on the play by Charles Bennett (who also collaborated with Hitchcock on The 39 Steps and The Man Who Knew Too Much).
Alice White (played by Anny Ondra) has stabbed to death a man who tried to rape her. Her boyfriend Frank Webber (John Longden) a detective in the police force, covers it up; but Tracy (Donald Calthrop), the local petty thief, tries to blackmail the couple. This leads to Tracy’s attempted arrest and a spectacular police chase, which ends on the roof of the British Museum.
In homage to Hitchcock’s love of good food, and his East End roots, audiences can relax prior to the screening in the grounds of the Walthamstow Assembly Hall with great food and drink from the Real Food Festivals including Bell & Brisket (salt beef bagels), Born & Raised (British and East End themed pizzas) as well as Wondering Wine, a vintage Citroen H Van wine bar – particularly fitting as – like many of the characters in his film- Alfred Hitchcock was always partial to a good drink too…
Walthamstow Assembly Hall was conceived in the same year that Hitchcock made Blackmail, when architect Philip Dalton Hepworth entered an architectural design competition to design and build the headquarters for the newly created municipal borough of Walthamstow (eventually completed in 1941).
The next Hitchcock’s East End event takes place on 5th September with an open-air screening of North by Northwest on Leyton Marshes. Hitchcock’s East End is presented by Create and Barbican Film and commissioned by Hill Residential Ltd, working in partnership with the London Borough of Waltham Forest and ISHA (Islington and Shoreditch Housing Association). The project forms part of a programme of events leading towards the opening of the new Empire Cinema in late 2014 – returning a cinema to the borough after a ten year absence – which will form part of a major regeneration project, The Scene at Cleveland Place, a new leisure destination for Waltham Forest.
For more information and to book tickets, please Click Here.
