Our March talk

Our lives in film – a talk by Derek Smith

"The power of film is incredible ... Everybody's got a story to tell."

In a world so often focused on celebrity, Derek Smith makes documentaries about ordinary people's lives. 

Derek has been making films since he was in the 6th form. 20 years ago, he was a producer-director in regional TV, where he was working in film crews of six or seven people. 

Digital technology has enabled him to shift to making films himself, to author his own films, teach himself editing and record his own voiceovers, making changes straightforward. Access to software has made it possible to produce books to accompany his documentaries. And he brings to his digital work the discipline from his directing days.

Taking us through some of his films, Derek showed us Finsbury People, hearing from people who had been through the Blitz. We saw a beautiful slow motion sequence from a 1980s Channel 4 programme about racing pigeons in the North East. We heard the story of a series taking Edward Lear's landscape drawings to modern Greece – made with a historian, funded by one of his bandmates and bought by Sky Arts. Another of Derek's films looked into what happened to the people in a famous 1953 photo by Paul Strand, of peasant life in Italy long gone – a film that being an independent filmmaker made possible because he could work in depth, without time pressure. In his film Victory's Children, he followed the life stories of all of the children in a 1945 photo of a VE Day party. Stockton Museum put the photos on display. To mark the replacement of its community centre, Derek made a film about the Gascoyne Estate, looking into why its quality of design, sense of utopia and community had been so successful. And Derek told us how a film commissioned by Thornaby Town Council to tell the story of the Devil's Bridge road disaster led to better safety signage, to a memorial and to connections between people.

Over 50 years in film... and Derek is still looking, listening and researching. 

Find out more about Derek's work and see some of his films on his website and Together TV .

Our monthly coffee morning: Friday 29th March at Jim & Tonic at the Print House, 133 High Street, Stratford, E15 2RB. Meet between 10.30am and 11am 

This is just along the road from our original venue for this month's coffee morning, the Mary Ward Centre, set back from the road, facing the canal. For those who fancy a walk after their coffee, it's an easy stroll along the canal to Three Mills Green.