Anja Kirschner POLLY II
Plan for a Revolution in Docklands
Broadcast Gallery Portland Row Dublin 1
The show will open on Thursday 10th of April at 5:00 pm with a conversation between Anja Kirschner and Dr Maeve Connolly followed by a drinks reception.
Broadcast is delighted to announce the opening of a solo show by Anja Kirschner, entitled “POLLY II – Plan for a Revolution in Docklands.” Set in the not-so-distant future POLLY II – part satirical sci-fi, part soap opera and Brechtian ‘Lehrstueck’ – portrays the lives of pirates and outcasts surviving in the flooded ruins of East London, a lawless zone set to become the latest in luxury waterside living according to government plans and venturing developers’ wet dreams.
The film imagines a future insurrection coloured by the legacy of dispossessed peasants, political radicals, whores, sailors, pirates, and former slaves whom once inhabited East London and fought a daily battle against their subjection to poverty, displacement and judicial terror.
Alluding to Polly (1728) - John Gay’s censored sequel to the popular Beggar’s Opera (1727), which resurrected the character of the robber Macheath in the disguise of the African pirate captain Morano (scheming to take revenge on a colony in the West Indies) – POLLY II is populated by many of the characters made popular by Gay and Brecht. The film features the naïve and incorruptible Polly, the vengeful whore Jenny Diver, and the treacherous and the greedy Peachum – fencer, thief-taker and king of the beggars.
Beyond drawing on Gay and Brecht, the structure of the films four main acts is conceived as an overt reference to Hogarth’s satirical print series which chronicle the ‘progress’ of stock characters from the London under-classes from poverty and petty crime towards their death on the gallows. However, the course of Hogarthian ‘progress’ is turned on its head in each scene of POLLY II, instead depicting the possibilities of a process where power is seized by the powerless and the outlaws appropriate law.
The production of POLLY II has been funded by Arts Council England, and was realised with a large cast of predominantly amateur actors from East London, whose backgrounds range from TV drama to training with Anna Scher.
The film was shot by Nick Gordon-Smith, who is himself a filmmaker and also Director of Photography to Andrew Koetting (Gallivant, This Filthy Earth).
Anja Kirschner is an artist filmmaker who studied at Slade School of Fine Art, London and also at The School of the Art Institute in Chicago. She was the winner of the Beck’s Futures Student Film and Video Prize in 2002, and has exhibited internationally in film festivals and galleries.
To subscribe to our mailing list, please send an email to broadcastinvite@gmail.com
Website coming soon
Broadcast is delighted to announce the opening of a solo show by Anja Kirschner, entitled “POLLY II – Plan for a Revolution in Docklands.” Set in the not-so-distant future POLLY II – part satirical sci-fi, part soap opera and Brechtian ‘Lehrstueck’ – portrays the lives of pirates and outcasts surviving in the flooded ruins of East London, a lawless zone set to become the latest in luxury waterside living according to government plans and venturing developers’ wet dreams.
The film imagines a future insurrection coloured by the legacy of dispossessed peasants, political radicals, whores, sailors, pirates, and former slaves whom once inhabited East London and fought a daily battle against their subjection to poverty, displacement and judicial terror.
Alluding to Polly (1728) - John Gay’s censored sequel to the popular Beggar’s Opera (1727), which resurrected the character of the robber Macheath in the disguise of the African pirate captain Morano (scheming to take revenge on a colony in the West Indies) – POLLY II is populated by many of the characters made popular by Gay and Brecht. The film features the naïve and incorruptible Polly, the vengeful whore Jenny Diver, and the treacherous and the greedy Peachum – fencer, thief-taker and king of the beggars.
Beyond drawing on Gay and Brecht, the structure of the films four main acts is conceived as an overt reference to Hogarth’s satirical print series which chronicle the ‘progress’ of stock characters from the London under-classes from poverty and petty crime towards their death on the gallows. However, the course of Hogarthian ‘progress’ is turned on its head in each scene of POLLY II, instead depicting the possibilities of a process where power is seized by the powerless and the outlaws appropriate law.
The production of POLLY II has been funded by Arts Council England, and was realised with a large cast of predominantly amateur actors from East London, whose backgrounds range from TV drama to training with Anna Scher.
The film was shot by Nick Gordon-Smith, who is himself a filmmaker and also Director of Photography to Andrew Koetting (Gallivant, This Filthy Earth).
Anja Kirschner is an artist filmmaker who studied at Slade School of Fine Art, London and also at The School of the Art Institute in Chicago. She was the winner of the Beck’s Futures Student Film and Video Prize in 2002, and has exhibited internationally in film festivals and galleries.
To subscribe to our mailing list, please send an email to broadcastinvite@gmail.com
Website coming soon
