Floating Cinema returns to London with experimental Anglo-Brazilian soap opera

The Floating Cinema is returning to London for a summer season called Another Country that will feature the world’s first Anglo-Brazilian soap opera. The custom-made barge will tour the city’s waterways, hosting events in Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, King’s Cross, Hackney Wick and Mile End.

It begins on 30 July with Contracorrente, a live experimental soap opera which is filmed half on the Floating Cinema and half in Rio de Janeiro. The collaboration is timed to mark the start of the Olympics in Rio.

On 19-21 August, the barge will be moored at Hackney Wick, where it will offer World Cities, a weekend of films “celebrating, eulogizing and interrogating” the changing face of London. Other events include Swarming the Castle, in Mile End, which looks at women, race, religion and identity. Ghosts of Green and Pleasant Lands, in King’s Cross, explores the meaning of the English countryside.

The events have been curated by novelist Hari Kunzru. Films, talks, and workshops will take place on the boat and on the banks of the Regents and Lee Navigation canals.

The Floating Cinema was built in 2013, and puts on events across Britain. It was partly inspired by East London’s waterways. This series of canals, once used for trade, that now form part of the area’s regeneration. They run through Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, the centre of the 2012 Olympics, and are increasingly home to bars, restaurants and pop-up businesses, as well as featuring quieter stretches.