Brixton Is Burning

Brixton has degenerated into a disregarded area inhabited by London’s new robot workforce – robots built and designed to carry out all of the tasks which humans are no longer inclined to do. The mechanical population of Brixton has rocketed, resulting in unplanned, cheap and quick additions to the skyline.

With Support from

Kibwe Tavares – Direction, animation, modeling, lighting, texturingetc…
David Hoffman – Photographer Brixton riots archive.hoffmanphotos.com/​
Mourad Bennacer – Sound Designer designsonore.tumblr.com
DJ Hiatus “The Great Insurrection” hiatusmusic.net

For more supercool projects
factoryfifteen.com

This video by Kibwe Tavares takes me down memory lane. Even though it depicts future events it uses footage from the 1981 riots and is cleverly structured over video taken in present day Brixton.
I was shopping in Brixton prior to the start of the 1981 riots and well remember the tension in the air as the police swamped the area with “desk jockeys” who stopped and searched every black youth in their path. I was in A W Youngs on Atlantic Road buying photographic paper and a guy cycled into the shop and asked for some film. He said that a riot was about to start and he wanted to take photographs of it. As we drove away gangs had already gathered and were playing football in the main road. (They did stop to let me pass.)
Later that evening I was able to watch Brixton burning on TV. Who was it that said “the revolution will not be televised”?

The film follows the trials and tribulations of young robots surviving at the sharp end of inner city life, living the predictable existence of a populous hemmed in by poverty, disillusionment and mass unemployment. When the Police invade the one space which the robots can call their own, the fierce and strained relationship between the two sides explodes into an outbreak of violence echoing that of 1981.