Raver makes it to the spotlight as director

Nuzhat Ahmed
Tom Cordell started off his career in the 1990s filming raves on his handheld camera, but now he is up for a top award with London Utopia, his entry for the Open City London festival.
London Utopia is a documentary film, telling the story of the architecture of some of London’s finest buildings, including two of Islington’s Landmarks. This documentary could land Cordell for best emerging director
Mr Cordell said: “The film looks at what I call the ‘social architecture’ of London from the 1930s to the 1980s.”
The film begins by focusing on Finsbury health centre in Pine Street and Bevin court in Cruikshank, Islington – both designed by the pioneering modernist Berthold Lubetken.
London Utopia grew out of his passion for modernist architecture, which he feels has been vilified over the past 35 years.
The young director has always been drawn to the excitement of London’s post-war landscape; concrete and brick texture, unadorned clean lines, neon glow and its dark shadows.
“It uses the buildings as a symbol of the ideas of the society of that time, and the aim to create a fairer, more equal society. The Finsbury Health Centre, for example, was the prototype for the NHS.”
This documentary outlines the love and fascination the filmmaker has for the city he grew up in, meeting the architects who designed it, and reuniting them with the buildings they created.
“I used to film drum ‘n’ bass raves when I was about 19,” he said. “Around 1997, digital cameras came onto the market that meant you could suddenly go and film things at a very low cost.
Mr Cordell was discovered by a BBC producer who saw his videos and offered him some work. He went on to make music videos for a host of UK Garage acts, including the Dreem Team, as well as working as a researcher and assistant producer in TV.
“I worked on loads of crime documentaries before this film,” he added.
The filmmaker has spent a year of his life spending a lot of time with murderers and drug dealers, so this documentary was a change in gear for the young director.
This would be the first feature-length work for the 33-year-old – who started off his career as a teenage raver.
“I had once thought that popular taste would catch up with urban building of the 50’s 60’s and 70’s, it’s now under attack major symbols of that time are being destroyed-often with gruesome delight on the part of wreckers. We urgently need to defend what is left before it is all gone.”
“My early research took me back to the destruction of the Second World War and the plans drawn up then to rebuild the city.”
The young director began to contact the people who tried to change the city, and his narrative thread continued to shift around as the filming went on.
“What I found was that the power of the buildings came from the vision they were meant to serve – and that it’s this vision that so polarises opinion, said Cornell. “They symbolise an attempt to build a fair, open society, and their existence frightens people who have rejected these values,” he added
This film is an attempt to understand both why Mr Cordell is so drawn to these cityscapes and also why some hate them so much.