Using as its creative starting point an iconic early 70s photograph by acclaimed photographer Don McCullin of a youngster running along a bleak Liverpool street, this engaging documentary delves into the community who live in that same area today.
The documentary’s title has an overt link to the song that plays over the opening credits, Mike Hart’s ‘Almost Liverpool 8’, and also plays with the notion that despite wanting to make a film about the Liverpool suburb of Toxteth (or L8 in post code terms) and its link with the photograph, after investigation it transpires that it might have been take just outside of the Toxteth area – hence the ‘almost’ in the title.
The filmmakers themselves actually have fun with that notion as the film closes, but to a great extent it doesn’t matter. The Liverpool of the early 1970s that McCullin went to photograph was a tough place still recovering from post-war deprivation (with many of the buildings he photographed subsequently pulled down), but the film aims to show how strong the multi-cultural community is today.
The area of Toxteth, at the edge of the city centre of Liverpool, may have hit the headlines in the early 1980s due to a series of protests and riots brought on by strains between the community and authorities and an incident of police brutality but the is film keen to show that Toxteth today is a very different place.
As a contrast to McCullin’s black-and-white pictures of wet and bleak streets, Almost Liverpool 8 presents a vibrant, supportive, artistic community filmed in warm summer sunshine. The spine of the film is an interview with McCullin who talks warmly about his affection for the city, but at the doc’s heart is the individuals we see interviewed.
They include community organiser Joe Farrag; beekeeper Barry Chang; young rapper P3LZ; poet Roger McGough; beautician Delucia Emina and photographer Ab Badwi. Perhaps most engaging is shopkeeper Galal ‘Adam’ Saleh (whose premises are close to Ringo Starr’s former home) who talks warmly about the sense of community as he poses proudly next to his life-size standee of Liverpool footballer Mo Salah.
Almost Liverpool 8 aims to paint a parallel contemporary portrait of the same area through the eyes of the people who inhabit it today, in contrast to McCullin’s iconic image. Modern-day L8 is a classic melting pot of cultures where elegant Georgian townhouses rub shoulders with social housing, where mosques stand opposite synagogues, and where people from diverse countries converge into an area that is as diverse as its population.
The film is less about history, more a warm-tinged tribute to a community that has a strong awareness of who they are. Rather engagingly for a film about Liverpool, football and music crop up just a couple of times (both from shopkeeper and Liverpool-supporting Galal ‘Adam’ Saleh of Ringo’s proximity). Instead it is photographers, poets and writers who offer their take on this perhaps misunderstood community.
The film is shot in a relatively static style (which references McCullin’s photographic imagery) and prefers to focus on a supportive community rather than presenting any kind of political subtext. Very few people are actually filmed out on the streets, instead the shots are nicely framed, of attractive housing shot on a warm summers day. Don McCullin’s image and his warm recollections about the city are the film’s hook, but it is the smiling and enthusiastic locals that give it its warm-hearted energy.
UK, 2020, 89mins
Dirs Daniel Draper, Allan Melia
Production Shut Out The Light
Producer Christie Allanson, Daniel Draper
Screenplay Daniel Draper
Cinematography Allan Melia
Editor Christie Allanson
With Don McCullin, Joe Farrag, Barry Chang, Brodie Arthur, Wendy Okoli, Amina Atiq, Roger McGough, Yusuf Ashour, Jane MacNeil, Olivier Stockman, Maryam Ghorbankarimi, Ab Badwi, Delucia Emina, Hawkar Tala, Elliss Eyo-Thompson
