The Dilapidated Dwelling (PG*) + ScreenTalk with Patrick Keiller

'What does it mean to live in a culture that finds it so difficult to produce new domestic architecture?' asks the invisible protagonist of Keiller’s film, an inquisitive and puzzled fictional researcher, voiced by actress Tilda Swinton. She returns to the UK with fresh, and frustrated, eyes, finding, after her 20 years in the Arctic, that whilst the UK remains one of the world’s wealthiest and most technologically advanced economies, its extraordinarily expensive housing still lingers in a state of backward ruin.

Nineteen years on from its release, Keiller’s essay on the problems of the house in Britain has only gotten more vital, acute and pertinent, as the housing crisis rages, rising rents displace residents, and property is leveraged as an asset that dominates the global economy.