Spectacle has an extensive and ever growing video archive. The archive contains material from 1979 to the present day and covers a range of topics including: housing, regeneration, protest movements, anti-racism, music, wellbeing, alternative living and community media.
Spectacle offers a sliding scale of rates subject to usage and terms of contract. Please use one of our archive contact forms listed below if you would like to license or screen any content from the archive or email: archive@spectacle.co.uk
Spectacle has covered issues and events relating to urban planning particularly in London but also cities around Europe. These films provide critiques of top down urban planning, give examples of bottom up regeneration, and show resident’s struggles against displacement and gentrification.
Silwood Estate:
Silwood was a post war housing estate in Southwark, London. Spectacle has been running participatory film programs with residents of the estate, documenting its demolition and redevelopment, for several decades.
Protest:
Spectacle has documented protest movements since the 1980s and has an extensive archive covering marches and strikes. These include: the poll tax riots, marches in support of the miners, protests against the criminalisation of raves and free parties, anti racism demonstrations and anti capitalism camp outs.
Peckham:
A selection of Spectacle films about Peckham, architecturally significant buildings and redevelopments in the area. The films show a tension between people wanting to improve their neighbourhood and the imposition of top down redevelopment plans.
Wapping Dispute:
The Wapping dispute of 1986 is a moment of major historical significance for both the trade union movement in the UK and in the history of print journalism. Spectacle was on the ground covering the dispute and holds a unique and valuable collection of archive footage from this time. Footage in the archive features footage from sit down pickets, protests involving print workers and Wapping residents, International Women’s Day marches, anti page 3 protests and general Wapping and News International location shots.
Battersea Power Station:
Spectacle has followed the grassroots campaigns of Battersea Power Station Community Group to preserve the building for the public good for over 15 years. Or archive contains footage of demonstrations around the redevelopment of Battersea Power Station, views of the building before and during the redevelopment process and interviews with campaigners.
Shaker Aamer:
Shaker Aamer is a UK resident who was held in Guantanamo Bay prison for thirteen years without charge. He was finally released in 2015. Spectacle covered his case and the movement to have him freed and produced the films Shaker Aamer: A Decade of Injustice and Outside the Law: Stories From Guantanamo. Our Archive contains footage from the campaign to free Shaker Aamer from Guantanamo Bay prison as well as interviews with former prisoners (Moazzam Begg and, in his first major interview, Omar Deghayes), lawyers for the prisoners (Clive Stafford Smith in the UK and Tom Wilner in the US), journalists and campaigners.
