'Lift'

“Filmmaker Marc Isaacs sets himself up in a London tower block lift. The residents come to trust him and reveal the things that matter to them creating a humorous and moving portrait of a vertical community.”

This is a short film essentially about a community of people who all use a lift in their residential block. It tells of most people's initial distrust of the camera and then their eventual opening up and some even take enjoyment of being filmed. Although this theme is not directly relevant to my project I do believe the film carries other merits as well as being a really uplifting piece to watch.

It tells if an average London community. People leading normal lives, relatively happy going about their ways. Accommodation for the masses interested Le Corbusier. He took issue with the Parisian slums and played a large role in the overhaul of these areas. He was looking for reasonable, practical and comfortable production for the masses i.e. ordinary people in their surroundings.

The way Marc Isaacs films the lift is both analytical and beautiful. The prolonged detailed shots of the lift descending and ascending accompanied by the echoes of people and the sounds of the lift itself are mesmerising. Filmed in winter you really get a sense of the coldness of physical tower block but the people bring some warmth and many of the 'characters' are humourous. The integration of people was a secondary thought because although the focus is to see how people react when having their every day life filmed.

The lift itself becomes the film maker's domain for 10 hours a day over an undisclosed period of time and he manages to turn the space from a place traditionally associated with awkward silences into a somewhere people will happily start to open up about their day and become more conversational. It becomes more of a community. Being physically confined in a small space for such long hours is something not many people are willing to do. This led me to think how Le Corbusier's Machine notion should be taken. Should we be living in literal machines? A house is a machine for living in: most people would not see a machine as their first idea of comfort so what is it that we should take from this idea?

The film is actually quite an uplifting one because it provides an insight into ordinary people going about their business, but also shows how people open up about some really quite personal happenings in their lives.

Ordinary people within an ordinary mechanical contraption. The cinematography of the film really captures the essence of the small spaces and long vertical corridors of the lift which has made me consider both still and moving images as a way of portraying the idea of a house being a machine for living in and therefore something to explore further.