The Housing Film

The Housing Film examines how a century of realities and possibilities in domestic living have been profiled and foregrounded through studies and representations of Housing in the medium of Film. The filmic investigations, analysis and exposés of homes and our way of occupying them, and their possible effect on behaviour, in documentaries like Housing Problems (1935) and Paul Sng’s Dispossession: The Great Council Housing Swindle (2017), propaganda films like Cumbernauld: Town for Tomorrow (1970), dramas like Cathy Come Home (1966)and features like High Rise (2017), to understand how closely the tow - film and housing - have grown and developed together, each conditioning the understanding and the range of possibilities of the other.

This study will examine how these histories are in fact intertwined, will analyse and assess the mutual effects of Housing and Film and propose and define a specific category of ’The Housing Film.’

Johnny Rodger is Professor of Urban Literature at Glasgow School of Art. His most recent publications include Glasgow Cool of Art: 13 books of fire at the Mackintosh Library, Key Essays: Mapping the Contemporary in Literature and Culture and The Hero Building: An Architecture of Scottish National Identity.