We are thrilled to launch the new HENI Talks film, Penny Woolcock: Parallel Worlds. Responding to Modern Art Oxford’s exhibition Penny Woolcock: Fantastic Cities (17 November 2018 – 3 March 2019), this short film explores the life and influences of the groundbreaking artist and filmmaker.https://player.vimeo.com/video/314773459
Penny Woolcock: Parallel Worlds from HENI Talks on Vimeo.
Penny Woolcock is an artist, filmmaker and director, amongst other things. But hers is an art that is not the preserve of the gallery. Rather, Woolcock seeks to create art that contributes towards real impact in the world, exploring issues of social inequality that we encounter every day on the streets, though we may not always realise it.
Indeed, Woolcock turns her lens to the streets to expose the ‘parallel worlds’ that coexist, often imperceptibly, in daily life. Whether it be the difference in experience of taking a walk in North London on a summers evening between a middle-class resident and one of the “Cally Boyz”, of Caledonian Road, as in The Same Road is a Different Road (2018), or acting as a line of communication between rival gangs in Birmingham as in One Mile Away (2012), Woolcock seeks to tell the stories of often overlooked social groups, helping us to ‘imagine a different way of living’ together.