William Raban | 1986 | UK | 66’ | digital | English spoken

Thames Film examines the changing face of the River Thames over three centuries, tracing a route from Tower Bridge to the estuary, where the river meets the open sea, before returning along the same course back into the city. Raban surveys embankments, weathered wharves, and dilapidated warehouses – landscapes in which labour, empire, trade, and industrial decline are inscribed. These present-day images are interwoven with archival footage from films commissioned by the Port of London Authority, maps and photographs of the Thames from 1937, and references to Bruegel the Elder’s The Triumph of Death. The words of the travel writer Thomas Pennant, who followed the same route in 1787, are presented in voice-over by the film’s narrator, John Hurt. Through this layering, the docklands of the late 1980s are entwined with their industrial and imperial past, revealing the deep histories embedded along the river’s margins. Filmed on 16mm from the low freeboard of a drifting boat, the camera adopts what Raban described as the river’s own point of view – tidal, unmoored, carried forward, yet continually returning. 

This special presentation celebrates the 40th anniversary of the film’s original release in 1986.

William Raban is one of the foremost British artists and experimental filmmakers of the last fifty years, known primarily for his landscape, performance and multi-screen-based films. From 1972 to 1976, he was the workshop manager of the London Film-Makers’ Co-operative and is Professor Emeritus of Film at University of the Arts, London.

In the presence of William Raban.