Nightcleaners + ScreenTalk with Humphry Trevelyan, James Scott, Sally Alexander, Dan Kidner and Mary Kelly (12)

Dan Kidner is a curator and writer based in London. He was Director of Picture This, Bristol (2011–2013), and City Projects, London (2004–2011). His recent publications include a monograph on the work of Leslie Thornton, edited with Natalie Bell and Milan Ther and published by Sternberg Press (2022), and the book and DVD edition Nightcleaners and *36 to ’77, co-edited with Alex Sainsbury and published by Raven Row, Koenig Books, and LUX (2018). He was co-editor of Working Together: British Film Collectives in the 1970s (2013) and A Detour Around Infermental (2011). He regularly writes for art magazines and journals. His recent exhibitions include The Inoperative Community at Raven Row (2015) and Rozdzielona Wspólnota (The Inoperative Community II) at Muzeum Sztuki, Łódź, Poland (2016).

Humphry Trevelyan is a British filmmaker, educator, and political documentarian associated with the radical independent film movement of the 1970s. As a founding member of the Berwick Street Film Collective, he collaborated on works that explored labour politics, feminism, migration, and collective memory. With a background in social anthropology and documentary photography, he began his film practice in 1969 with Cinema Action, the first of the radical film collectives that were established the UK in that period. He is best known for his involvement in Nightcleaners (1975), a landmark documentary about the campaign to unionise women office cleaners in London, widely regarded as one of the most influential works of British political cinema. This collaboration with Marc Karlin and James Scott was extended with the production of 36 to 77, regarded as the sequel to Nightcleaners. Along with Marc Karlin and James Scott, he was part of the movement of independent filmmakers that campaigned under the banner of the Independent Film Association for the establishment of what became Channel 4.

After studying Fine Art at the Slade School in London, where he made his first film, James Scott turned down a three-picture offer from Tony Richardson in order to co-found Maya Film Productions with Barney Platts-Mills and Adam Barker-Mill. After collaborating with a young David Hockney, he soon became known for his new apporach working with visual artists. Promoting independent film in the 1970s, he was also a founding member of both the IFA and The Other Cinema. In 1970, Scott began work with Marc Karlin on a project about women janitors. Joined by Humphry Trevelyan and later, Mary Kelly, they went on to make the film known as Nightcleaners (Part 1), pioneering a new format in the political documentary. Five years later, joined by Jon Sanders, they made the sequel, ’36 to ’77.  The story of Myrtle Wardally. Returning to his roots in dramatic fiction, Scott later wrote and directed the Oscar-winning short A Shocking Accident, adapted from a story by Graham Greene. In 1990, Scott moved to Los Angeles, returning to painting and printmaking. After a 66-year filmmaking career, he recently completed an award-winning documentary on the Catalan artist and activist, Antoni Tàpies.

Sally Alexander is a British historian, writer, and feminist activist whose work has been central to the development of women’s history and feminist scholarship in Britain. Emerging from the Women’s Liberation Movement of the late 1960s and 1970s, she combined political activism with academic research, becoming a founding editor of the History Workshop Journal and later Professor of Modern History at Goldsmiths, University of London. Her writing explores memory, subjectivity, psychoanalysis, and the histories of gender and social movements, and she is widely recognised for helping establish feminist history as a major field of historical inquiry.

Mary Kelly is an influential artist whose project-based work explores feminism, identity, and historical memory through large-scale narrative installations. After studying painting in Florence and teaching in Beirut, she moved to London in 1968, where her engagement with feminist theory shaped landmark works of the 1970s, including Post-Partum Document (1973–79), Women & Work (1975), and the film Nightcleaners as part of the Berwick Street Film Collective. Her subsequent projects – such as Interim, Gloria Patri, Mea Culpa, and Circa 1968 – extend her examination of the body, war, trauma, and collective memory through experimental materials and forms. Kelly has exhibited widely, received major honours including a Guggenheim Fellowship, and held significant academic posts at UCLA and USC.