Free Film Festival, Camberwell Union, the Grove Bridge, Wine, and Bikes

People in a pub watching a TV screen

Camberwell Free Film Festival is back for another year. Starting on Thursday 15th, there will be a free screening every night (bar one) for the next ten nights—plus a special bonus (more on that in a sec)—at diverse venues across the neighbourhood.

I can personally recommend Ben Wheatley’s fun shoot-em-up Free Fire (showing at Cycle PS) and John Carpenter’s capitalist-critique alien invasion film, They Live (at The Cambria), and am looking forward to seeing the much-heralded growing up tale The Florida Project (at The Crooked Well) and the hand-painted animated biopic Loving Vincent (at Cafe at the ORTUS), but there’s plenty in this line-up to cater to everyone.

The bonus feature is The Shed at Dulwich, in which VICE journalist Oobah Butler managed to make a non-existent restaurant into the highest-rated on Trip Advisor—and then decided to open it for one night only. It’s a short film with two screenings at The Phoenix on Sunday 18th, each followed by a Q&A.

The full line-up of the Camberwell Free Film Festival is online, and there are posters and leaflets at selected venues around Camberwell. Most (all?) films are first-come, first-served.

Other News

Plans have been (re-)submitted for a huge new housing and mixed-use development on the site of Burgess Business Park. Camberwell Union promises 505 new homes (35% affordable—although that’s already being disputed as ‘not viable’), new streets and public realm, and mixed commercial, creative, and retail units (including a microbrewery). You can see the developer’s brochure [PDF], and follow or comment on the planning application by searching for reference 17/AP/4797 at Southwark’s Planning Search (which really should provide shareable URLs).

The former Nape site, on Church Street, looks set to reopen under the name Good Neighbour. Same owners, new management, from what I can tell from their licensing application. @foodstories on Twitter says there’ll be “a wine bar, sharing plates, mini pizzas, and music downstairs” but I haven’t seen any confirmation of that.

The bridge on Camberwell Grove looks set to remain closed for a while yet as Network Rail have said it requires further strengthening work before Southwark can start their reopening work—sometime in the Summer. The bridge should reopen in more or less the same scheme as before it closed, pending a longer-term reevaluation.

Update On 14th March Andy Pryor on Twitter let me know that he’d “got a letter from Southwark and Network Rail saying the works on Camberwell Grove bridge are set for 14th May — 2nd August, due to reopen to vehicles under 3 tonnes on 3rd August”.

Finally, while there’s no news yet on getting Santander bike docks in Camberwell, it seems Southwark have decided on a multi-operator model and will allow dockless bike-sharing operators Mobike and Ofo to begin placing bikes in the borough. Camberwell and Rotherhithe have been earmarked as the areas of initial focus.

Author: Peter

Long-time resident of Camberwell, author of this blog since July 2004.

13 thoughts on “Free Film Festival, Camberwell Union, the Grove Bridge, Wine, and Bikes”

  1. There’s a scattering of of Ofo bikes (yellow/black) and MoBikes (grey/red) around the area. Seems like a good idea. I took one for quick spin earlier. Once I had navigated the app and committed my 50 pence I realized someone had already skidded out the back wheel to leave a flat spot and a bumpy ride.

    I’m not sure Camberwell is ready for this level of collective responsibility.

    Also for the record, the permissions and privacy stuff in these apps looks a bit dubious. I probably unwittingly contributed to an under-handed election campaign or PR stunt, like in that Facebook scandal 😉

  2. Anyone know what’s happening with The Bear on Camberwell New Rd? Looks like they’re knocking part of the building down.

    1. The landlord needed to do some structural repairs. It’s a massive shame they didn’t think to do them before the new owners moved in an opened up. Bearing in mind it was empty for a year or so. I’m still really sad that they ripped out the old features of the pub. I can’t believe they thought it was a good idea.

  3. Good news about the bikes but lets just hope they think about where they place them so that people can get off buses , use a wheelchair or walking stick , use a child buggy and generally walk along the very crowded streets without having to do a dance.

    Whoever decided to put the bike racks by the bus stop should be fired but I expect it was the same person who decided to put a bus shelter outside the off licence. No joined up thinking in Camberwell

  4. Probably it was the same person who decided the leisure center exit should be right by the smoking area at the Peckham ‘spoons. [although, to be fair, they have changed that now].

    The fact that Camberwell leisure centre exits directly to the Storm Bird and Hermits is purely coincidental, obviously

  5. Ofo scored well in the “Guardian” dockless bike survey on Saturday (14 April 2018). Santander were off the scale, meaning, unavailable “south of the Oval” and confusingly, “you must find a docking station”.

    Ofo are 50p for 30 minutes, capped at £5 a day, so you can’t exactly go for a ride. However, I like the yellow colour (“Guardian” man says “The bright yellow is ugly”) in fact when I first saw one dumped, I mean docked docklessly outside Lidl, I thought, “Ooh, what a nice yellow bike that someone has dumped.”

    These are modern times, indeed, though in our house we’re not looking forward to 2021 when we’ll have to have some sort of hybrid car, presumably an old Uber Prius with 500,000 urban miles on the clock and embarrassingly slow on the way to Cornwall with only one clean change of underwear on board.

    I hope the Mayor offers us a handsome scrappage bounty for our beautiful, leather-seated, alloy-wheeled, dirt-cheap, Volvo estate which we don’t use much anyway, guys.

    As they say these days.

    I am with the ubercool philosophers of the Frankfurt School (Walter Benjamin, these guys) that — well, you know, whatever they say.

    What they said.

    1. Hilarious .….…typical tunnel vision Daily Mail . No mention of all the healthy places

  6. Paul Dacre the editor of the “Mail” is to resign and go upstairs to lead the group. I wonder who will be next at the helm of the “Mail”. I hope they won’t disturb it’s 1950s shock-horror attitude and ability to turn the slightest tale into a monstrous and juicy outrage.

    The railway bridge work continues apace on Camberwell Grove. Soon we will be free from the double-bridge gridlock of east Camberwell.

  7. GREAT SHOW AT THE SOUTH LONDON GALLERY, best for years. Extraordinarily apposite, could be made in Camberwell, is from Rio, of nature and urban entwined together. Well done the gallery for spending the money on something decent. The rubbish was all right in its way, shocked us out of our bourgeois complacency, maybe, reminded us of the rubbish that’s all around us, nice point, resembles it incredibly as though art were a form of autistic mimicry, but what’s in the gallery now till 19 August is proper art and the more you look at it the more you find.

    + WELL DONE LUIZ ZERBINI +

    https://www.southlondongallery.org/exhibitions/luiz-zerbini/

  8. The owners of Fladda have sold up, I notice. Anyone know the story there? The new owners have taken over the business as a going concern, and so far everything seems exactly the same.

    New businesses don’t seem to stick around very long at all in Camberwell.

    Buddha Jazz has gone. It is now, or is about to be, a Spanish restaurant called Tapete.

  9. RUSKIN PARK SUMMER FETE was as fabulous as ever, very well appointed and attended. What a marvellous time of year in Camberwell this is. Well done to John McLennan and the Clan for appearing at the refugee gig in Warwick Gardens.

    Next Saturday 30 June is Lyndhurst Summer Fair at the primary school on Grove Lane — the worthiest of causes and most welcoming of fairs.

  10. The Nag’s Head on Camberwell Road is still open. This is fantastic news. Or is it this spell of hot weather — the pub looks like a mirage.

Comments are closed.