Nightcleaners

“Nightcleaners” mingles a realist commitment with Brechtian strategies to address a campaign to unionize women who cleaned office buildings at night, initiated in London 1970 by a working group affiliated with the Women’s Liberation Workshop. After shooting in a verité style, in the editing process the Berwick Street Film Collective adopted techniques that introduce a reflexive distance from the events depicted. Drawing on the lexicon of experimental filmmaking to probe the politics of representation across class lines. The production of “Nightcleaners”, a film deeply concerned with cleaners’ caring responsibilities, overlapped with the creation of Mary Kelly’s” Post-Partum Document” (1973-79), a landmark work of conceptual art developed to the subject of motherhood.

(Erika Balsom)