Thu March 16th @ 6:30 pm – 9:30 pm AEDT / $20.00 – $30.00 (Sold Out)
Cumbernauld HIT (1977)
First DADo screening of 2023! A discussion will be held after the film screening with Cumbernauld HIT’s very own Director Murray Grigor, an esteemed Scottish film-maker, writer and curator celebrated for his filmic contributions to architecture and the arts in the UK and Professor Alan Pert, Deputy Dean of Architecture at University of Melbourne.
Cumbernauld HIT is a unique cinematic artefact, emblematic of post-war optimism and the modernist commitment to a utopian architectural vision. Set in the Scottish New Town of Cumbernauld just East of Glasgow, which began construction in the 1950s to help ease overcrowding in the industrial city and improve and modernise the lives of its new inhabitants, the film was in fact sponsored by the Cumbernauld Development Corporation to help promote the ambitious development. Beloved English actor and seductress Fenella Fielding plays the film’s central antagonist, a supervillain who concocts an outlandish, Bond-villain-esque plot to blackmail the town of Cumbernauld, armed with pineapple motifs and nefarious yoghurt. This eccentric film is an original take on the promotional films produced for Scotland’s new towns during the 1970’s, and prompts some fascinating discussions around the role of developers as producers, new towns initiatives, urbanisation and utopian (or dystopian) visions.
A Murray Grigor Film. 44 minutes. Cumbernauld HIT is presented in collaboration with Australian Centre of Architectural History, Urban and Cultural Heritage (ACAHUCH).
About DADo:
Evenings with DADo offer an intimate commingling of film and conversation both large and small, centred around diverse historical and contemporary stories of architecture, design, landscape and urbanism. Feature-length films, documentaries, shorts and animations all find a home in Robin Boyd’s living room at ‘Walsh Street’, the social, energetic hub of the Robin Boyd Foundation. Guest speakers contribute unique perspectives on the various film subjects, kicking off the living room conversation in a home which decidedly sought to reject convention.
DADo’s 2023 program is presented by Thandi Lane, Rebecca Roke and Andrew MacKinnon.
Image: “Cumbernauld HIT” film still – a Murray Grigor production funded by Cumbernauld Development Corporation. Photograph copyright Murray Grigor, 1977.