Transforming an otherwise-overlooked city space, by day the Folly will host events and workshops, serving food and drink in their café from menus that change daily; rowing boats can even be hired by the more adventurous visitors to explore the surrounding waterways. By night the building transforms into an outdoor cinema showing classic animation, documentaries, along with early and experimental cinema accompanied by live scores, light shows, and performances.
Each weekend is curated around a specific theme – the opening weekend, which sold sold out almost immediately, was on the theme of ‘Fables’, showing the 1937 Disney classic Snow White on the Friday and Terry Gilliam’s Baron Munchasusen on the Sunday. Tickets for the remainder of the programme are released the week prior to each event, preventing them all being snapped up in one go – at £4 each, it’s not hard see why they’ve introduced this policy! – with a limited number of tickets also available on the door for those of us not so quick off the mark. This weekend’s programme is on the theme of ‘Structures’, and includes Requiem for Detroit, a documentary about Detroit’s “troubled love affair with the automobile” (unfortunately sold out), and American B-Movie The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms.
The project has been conceived and produced by Assemble, a collective of architects, artists and designers who last year transformed a derelict petrol station into The Cineroleum, a a temporary cinema on Clerkenwell Road. As with that project, Folly for a Flyover has been constructed from reclaimed and donated local material – but this time they have fabricated simple components to enable it to be dismantled at the end of July, with the parts finding new uses within the local area. The building sits on the edge of the Olympic site, and was funded by a Bank of America Merril Lynch Create Art Award of £40,000.
