Walking:Holding Film

Aim

To fund the completion of Walking:Holding, a documentary film exploring intimacy, identity and vulnerability in urban public spaces.

Performance art and mobile technology converge in Walking:Holding, a creative documentary exploring intimacy, identity and vulnerability in urban public spaces.

This experimental documentary explores a range of people’s experiences of urban public spaces. Using the concept of holding a stranger’s hand whilst walking through a town, the film asks how our sense of identity is informed and affected through interaction with others, how we might better connect with the strangers we share our streets with, and where and why people feel vulnerable in public.

Shot entirely on i-Phones, the footage has all been captured through documenting a tour of Rosana Cade’s award-winning interactive performance project ‘Walking:Holding’ to 6 towns across the UK, beginning in June 2016, and finishing the week Donald Trump was elected President of the United States of America in November 2016. The performance of Walking:Holding invites a solo audience members to embark on a carefully curated route through a town whilst holding hands with a series of very different local participants, varying in age, ethnicity, gender, sexuality and ability.

Filming took place in Reading, Colchester, Leith, Stoke-on-Trent, Doncaster, and Leeds. Using the framework of the performance as inspiration the film will take the viewer on a journey through the streets, parks, alleyways and shopping centres that make up these towns giving them the perspective of a live walker. Our companions on these walks will be the voices we hear from a series of intimate interviews and conversations with the participants. Over the course of the film these will interweave to create a complex dialogue on identity, what connects and divides communities, and what’s common or unique in the urban landscapes we are walking through.

Background

This project is an all-female collaboration between queer performance artist Rosana Cade, filmmakers Claire Nolan and Charlie Cauchi, Producer Sally Rose, and Co-Producer Elena Hill. For more information about the team visit our website.

Rosana has been touring the live performance of Walking:Holding for 6 years, originally developing it in response to her own experiences of holding hands in same-sex relationships and often not feeling comfortable to do so. The project has taken on new meanings as she has continued to tour it and work with a variety of individuals across the world, becoming a wider exploration of different people’s experiences of public space and the transformative potential of intimacy between strangers.

This film is particularly timely, as it captures the project at a significant moment of political resonance, between the EU referendum and President Trump being elected. For a lot of people in the UK the effect of the EU referendum altered their sense of safety and vulnerability in public space. Across Europe and the US we are seeing a rise in more extreme right wing politics, engendering a sense of precarity for minority communities. In response to these times, Rosana views this project as positive activism which invites us to consider other people’s perspective, and encourages us to view the stranger on the street as a potential companion.

Filming took place with support from the Jerwood Charitable Foundation and supported using public funds by the National Lottery through Arts Council England.

Support the Project

We’re really excited about finishing this film and reaching out to new audiences as well as taking it back to the communities that helped us make this work. But we can’t do this without your help.

Your support to this project will go towards the completion of the film. We have hours of wonderful footage and interviews and we are about to embark on the post-production phase of Walking:Holding. In order to do this, we still need to raise money for: editing, colour grading and sound design.

Your contribution will also allow us to carry out a series of community outreach activities, and develop a really strong marketing campaign in order to broaden the impact of the film. We want to reach audiences outside of the UK to begin an international dialogue around the themes, and your support will help us to achieve this.

If you aren’t able to support us financially but would still like to help Walking:Holding, we’d really appreciate it if you could share this project using social media or by spreading the word in any way you can.

For more information visit: www.walkingholding.com

Follow us on: Facebook, Twitter or Instagram

“Everyone acknowledged the astute provocation in Cade’s seemingly simple concept, with its flesh and blood challenge to prejudices and its honouring of individuals and their differences.” The Herald

“It was one of the greatest experiences in my whole life. To feel and be in the gap between private and public, strange and familiar, close and distant.” Particpant quote

This project successfully funded on 17th April 2017