AA School Students Take Cinema To Ethiopian Town Of Lalibela

New Exhibition At Truman Brewery Celebrates Cinema Lalibela And Launches Appeal
To Fund Permanent Cinema

15 September 2009: Students from the ARCHITECTURAL ASSOCIATION SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE (www.aaschool.ac.uk) designed, fabricated and transported a mobile cinema to the remote Ethiopian village of Lalibela in December last year as part of the School’s on-going programme of architectural investigations in developing countries to promote sustainable growth. Films and documentary material relating to the project will be on display at the Truman Brewery on 23 and 24 September, with an evening of Ethiopian food, music and talks on Wednesday 23 September from 18.00 – 22.00 (More details below).

The 12 students from Diploma Unit 7 at the AA School had just three weeks to raise funds, create the mobile cinema from scratch as well as negotiate Ethiopian customs and transport it across rough terrain to reach Lalibela in Northern Ethiopia. The town’s 20,000-strong community were shown films including David Attenborough’s Blue Planet, Home Alone, a local comedy, a film about Arsenal and some starring Jackie Chan. The cinema was a huge success, particularly amongst the many young people in the town, and there are now plans for the AA students to create a permanent cinema in the town for which they need to raise £50,000.

Almost a building in a suitcase, the structure of the cinema is lightweight (for portability), cheap and quick to assemble. It takes the dramatic form of a cylindrical enclosure housing the projection equipment. Images are back-projected onto the end of the cylinder allowing the audience to sit wherever they please without obstructing the picture. During the day the interior space can be used for consultation or exhibitions. Children in the village compared its appearance to the moon as they watched films under the stars.

The cinema project was conceived when Unit 7 met a former AA tutor, Rita Lambert, who is now project architect for Link Ethiopia’s ‘Score’ sports project in Lalibela. She told the students about a consultation exercise that was conducted as part of the Score project. When villagers were asked what their dream building for the village would be they requested a swimming pool. Rita felt this was a little too ambitious and asked for their second choice - a cinema. Hearing this story sparked the imaginations of Diploma Unit 7 tutors at the AA School who challenged the students to bring a mobile cinema with them on their imminent trip to Lalibela. The aim was to engage with the community to help make contacts for student research projects, whilst simultaneously providing entertainment as a gift to the village during their stay.

There is now a very real future for Cinema Lalibela. A project is already underway by the NGO, Link Ethiopia, who have plans to improve an existing football pitch and provide much needed sanitation facilities. Following their return from Ethiopia, Diploma Unit 7 were invited to design a permanent cinema as part of Link’s educational programme.

Through collaboration with Link Ethiopia and the mayor of Lalibela, the next phase of the project aspires to generate a community-owned and permanent public place in the town. This new proposal is the brainchild of the Lalibela Cinema Design Collective (LCDC), an independent student-led team distilled from Diploma Unit 7. LCDC will now present the achievements of Cinema Lalibela to London in a two-day event at Truman Brewery in the hope that they can raise £50,000 to build a permanent cinema in the village.

A short film about the project can be seen at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0z_m5JlmBrE

Wednesday 24 September, 18.00 – 22.00hrs, Cinema Lalibela Reception
Truman Brewery, 146 Brick Lane, London

RSVP Anna Cusden / 020 7221 7883 / anna.cusden@kallaway.co.uk

Press information

	Press releases and high resolution images can be downloaded from http://www.kallaway.co.uk/architectural-association-school.htm
	For further information please contact Anna Cusden: 020 7221 7883 / anna.cusden@kallaway.co.uk

The AA School
The ARCHITECTURAL ASSOCIATION SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTUREis the world's most renowned international and influential school of architecture. Since 1847 it has pioneered a belief in architecture as profession, culture and form of human enquiry and is credited with fostering the creation of worldwide leaders of architecture.

AA School alumni include architectural leaders Zaha Hadid, Rem Koolhaas, Lord Rogers, Will Alsop and many others. Through its unique, year-long, unit based system of teaching, direct intervention in cities and its intensively collaborative team based approach to learning, the school brings together disconnected worlds, fresh ideas and inspiring insights. The AA School is celebrated worldwide as an imaginative setting for architectural culture.

Diploma Unit 7 is made up of students in their fourth and fifth year of architectural study.
Tutors : Simon Beames and Kenneth Fraser

Link Ethiopia
Link Ethiopia is a UK-based charity that supports education in Ethiopia. We work in partnership with impoverished communities to provide vital educational resources such as classrooms, toilets, clean running water and libraries. To promote cultural awareness, we support partnerships between UK and Ethiopian schools and encourage young people to work together to change their world. We believe that education is the key to lifting people out of poverty and that partnership is the best way to achieve this.

For more information, visit our website: www.linkethiopia.org

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