Another England: Granada is a film made by Michael Smith and Maxy Bianco. It explores the immigration the Bianco family to Hartlepool, identifying their family shop as well as recording its destruction. This sense of the loss of a local, 'the loss of a yesterday, romantic and gay' as expressed in the song Granada sung by Maxy’s great uncle, which is threaded through the film, is explored alongside a new wave of Pakistani immigration and the creation of what might be seen as a new local. As the film asks, but leaves unanswered, "how did all this unravel? how did all this disappear?"
While there is a reprise of a nostalgic notion, the film captures a sense among some residents that this current local is not worth preserving. There is a sense of fatalism and acceptance, that 'these landlords ... as long as they get the money they don't want to know ... that's the situation the world's in matey'. The current local is also not popular, 'it's all changed, we're like Beirut' or I'm glad that this area is getting knocked down'. The comments are very different in tone compared with those in economically more prosperous locations, for example, in St Werburgh's in Bristol (see tab on Storytelling on this website) where the local was described as ‘Next door. Nearby, in the vicinity. Neighbours. Local Shop. Friends round the corner’, with people saying '‘Are you local? Yes I have an allotment just up the hill’.
The film does however echo the findings in Patchway, a much more deprived part of Bristol, in its description of the disappearance of local amenities in economically poorer neighbourhoods. This is particularly evident in the loss of the local shop, to be replaced by shopping facilities in town: "they all go down the town now because they've got no shops now". The film also records the apparent lack of space for young people to gather and their consequent unauthorised use of empty homes apparently awaiting demolition. They are 'sitting around just for somewhere to sit'.
Another England: Granada is available here.
While there is a reprise of a nostalgic notion, the film captures a sense among some residents that this current local is not worth preserving. There is a sense of fatalism and acceptance, that 'these landlords ... as long as they get the money they don't want to know ... that's the situation the world's in matey'. The current local is also not popular, 'it's all changed, we're like Beirut' or I'm glad that this area is getting knocked down'. The comments are very different in tone compared with those in economically more prosperous locations, for example, in St Werburgh's in Bristol (see tab on Storytelling on this website) where the local was described as ‘Next door. Nearby, in the vicinity. Neighbours. Local Shop. Friends round the corner’, with people saying '‘Are you local? Yes I have an allotment just up the hill’.
The film does however echo the findings in Patchway, a much more deprived part of Bristol, in its description of the disappearance of local amenities in economically poorer neighbourhoods. This is particularly evident in the loss of the local shop, to be replaced by shopping facilities in town: "they all go down the town now because they've got no shops now". The film also records the apparent lack of space for young people to gather and their consequent unauthorised use of empty homes apparently awaiting demolition. They are 'sitting around just for somewhere to sit'.
Another England: Granada is available here.