Ron Peck : Nighthawks

1 Mar 2020

Overview

Nighthawks was Britain’s first explicitly gay film made within the gay community. This quietly revolutionary film gives us one of cinema’s first complex, fully realised gay protagonists. The screening of this rare film will be followed by a conversation between Director Ron Peck and artist Ian Giles. Nighthawks is set in a post-Stonewall and pre-AIDS London. In the evenings Jim, an out geography teacher hits the bars, where the dance floor becomes a space of lusty liberation, dispiriting ritual and social connections. Peck made Nighthawks with a cast of mostly non-professional actors, advertising for roles in newspaper classifieds. Jim’s worlds collide when he’s confronted by his students. When asked if he is “bent” Jim gives the schoolboys a resounding lesson in tolerance that still reverberates today.