Local talent: Samuel Adewunmi and rapper Brownsilla, who grew up together in Maiden Lane, feature in the film
(Picture: Tin Luck)In 2019, Beatrix Blaise won a competition to make a one-shot short film on 35mm, using a 40ft technocrane. Her idea was to capture a “slice of life” in a housing block, flitting from window to window — now she just needed to pin down the perfect location for it.
She found it in Maiden Lane, a cluster of modernist council housing just north of King’s Cross, flanked on two sides by railway tracks. Blaise visited the local community centre and “straight away was met with loads of amazing people”.
“People were saying ‘Oh my gosh, so exciting you’re making a film! How about this person? And how about this person?” she remembers.
It resulted in Tin Luck, a beautifully realised examination of the area and its residents. It was nominated for Best UK Short at Raindance and stands as a proud testament to the power of community in London.
Around 90 per cent of the cast were made up of either Maiden Lane residents or their friends, while Nazrul Islam, managing director of the community centre, came on board as the executive producer of the film. After posting letters through hundreds of letter boxes on the estate, Blaise was able to recruit extras, as well as crew to work behind the scenes, offering them a kind of internship in the world of filmmaking. Much of the dialogue in the film was written with help from the actors themselves, adding another layer of authenticity.
Samuel Adewunmi, a rapidly rising talent who starred in Shola Amoo’s The Last Tree back in 2019, grew up in Maiden Lane and plays Tin Luck’s central character, Trey — a young man trying to make sense of masculinity, identity, vulnerability and ambition amid the claustrophobia of the estate.
Director Beatrix Blaise (left) and Samuel Adewunmi on set at Maiden Lane
Theo Clarke“It’s such a community, but it’s also cell-like and block-like,” Adewunmi says of the estate’s architecture. “You’re interconnected and you’re right next to your neighbours, everyone is together.”
It’s something that’s explored in the scene where Trey, standing on one of the higher balconies of the block, lowers a tin, attached to a piece of string with a message inside, to his girlfriend Leila on the ground floor.
“When you’re dealing with emotional things, or things that might be happening at home — like having to be the eldest that’s looking after five of your siblings, and your parents just expect you to do that, and be able to do that… having that responsibility, and then yet you live so close to your friends, and don’t necessarily want everyone to know your private business — I felt like the tin kind of represented all of that in a nutshell,” Adewunmi says. “Feeling like, ‘I know I’m so close to you, and I could just speak to you, but that means having to open up, and maybe I’m not necessarily in that position’.”
And so while Tin Luck deals with some of the negativity attached to living somewhere like Maiden Lane, it couldn’t be further from the typical representation of London estates we’re used to seeing on film. Instead of great, looming buildings beneath dark grey skies, the shoot took place during the “magic evening hour” of a balmy September day, with the backdrop of a setting sun bathing it all in a warm pink hue.
“It was all just about representing that balance between things being hard and sometimes, like Sam said, it being difficult to be constantly surrounded by people, but then it also being really quite supportive as well,” Blaise says. One shot in the film shows a balcony replete with vibrantly colourful flowers — a nod to how residents make their homes “really beautiful and magical, not gritty,” she adds.
For Adewunmi, filming near his childhood home was a “fun” trip down memory lane. “I’m really proud of where I grew up, and so to be able to creatively express myself in the spaces that I actually walked through, and with the people I actually grew up with… [it was like] being able to play in a sense, in the same way we played around growing up.”
The 40ft technocrane used to capture the film’s one-shot take
Theo ClarkeThe film clearly became a precious part of community life. While cosmetics brand Lush provided a good chunk of funding — Blaise is full of praise for its support for social, ethical films — there was still a small shortfall to make up. Undeterred, the community centre provided funds from their kitty to get the film over the line.
This relationship is “something that will continue”, Blaise says. She hopes to keep employing people from the community centre to work on future projects. “I said to everyone involved that Maiden Lane was my starting spot as a filmmaker, and I’ll remember that forever.”
Tin Luck is available to watch for free, or with a £5 donation, until November 7 at cinema.raindance.org with plans for a wider release in 2021
