Institute of Contemporary Arts

What's a Happening?

In conjunction with the BFI, we bring you 90 minutes of rare, lost and unseen psychedelic masterpieces. We kick off with the 1967 BBC documentary about the original Alexandra Palace event Man Alive: What's a Happening? This splendid period-piece documentary includes interviews with such legendary characters as Suzy Creamcheese as well as cameos from bemused Ally Pally security staff and assorted underground hipsters.

Anthony Stern's 1968 San Francisco follows, featuring a startling flash and freeze frame technique edited to a unique demo version of Pink Floyd's "Interstellar Overdrive". Stern's rapid, closely cut sequences form a colorful montage of bizarre images, creating a portrait of the city in all its photogenic glamour and kooky excess. Next up is the Jeff Keen trilogy of Cineblatz, Marvo Movies 1 and 2 and White Lite, which all epitomise the director's weird, wonderful and most surreally British take on Pop Art. Keen's 10-minute short, Meatdaze is next up - six segments containing a wild and pleasurably eccentric mix of cartoon, newsreel and featurettes.

Finally, we have the deranged Pythonesque comedy of John Beech's Postal Delivery and Arthur Johns' extraordinary essay on colour effects, Solar Flares Burn For You, set to a hypnotic Robert Wyatt soundtrack.

Please note

Films start at the advertised time. Doors open 15 mins prior to this. Latecomers are only admitted at the Duty Managers discretion.

This event has now finished