The 31^st Portobello Film festival screens for free more than 200 new independent films, documentaries and music films from Thursday 3 to Sunday 20 September at the Muse Portobello, 6- 10:30 pm Exploding Galaxies, Pink Floyd, David Hockney, Collecting Art Making.

For more than three decades Portobello Film Festival has been celebrating independent film making and Festival culture at the original epicentre of the British Underground. Free to enter and free to attend, the festival is an annual reminder of a time when Ladbroke Grove was to London what San Francisco was to America. The area has provided the perfect condition for a vibrant music and film scene with psychedelic rock developing alongside the Notting Hill Carnival.

One of this year’s highlights is a feature on Laura Del-Rivo, Britain’s first female beatnik author whose debut novel provided the inspiration for Michael Winner’s West 11. Supplementing her income by trading on the Market she was affectionately known as “The Tights Lady”.

The anti-establishment vibe of the Ladbroke Grove freak scene  continued and led to the collision punk rock and reggae. New Subscribers developed with the construction of the Westway flyover which is widely considered the birthplace of the British street art scene.

One Foot in the Grove revived the spirit of psychedelia, punk and 80s graffiti with a spectacular display of murals, giant sculptures and fire-breathing robots under the Westway in 2009.  While most traces have long since disappeared, a ceramic mural by Carrie Reichardt and the Treatment Rooms Collective remains as a permanent reminder. Members of the collective return with a great show at The Muse to run alongside Portobello Film Festival.  The PV party on 10 September is accompanied by a screening of Vive Le Punk, Danny Garcia’s documentary making 50 years of punk by following four bands still active today. The exhibition itself is open from 3 September. 

Another half-century of free culture is celebrated down the canal at Meanwhile Gardens which was created from waste ground in defiance of urban development and commercialisation. It boasts of London’s oldest skate parks. Rumours of an anniversary concert with bands who played at, meanwhile over the years are yet to be confirmed, provisional line up included in this brochure Tomorrow’ s Cinema Today.

Penny Price