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Have you got a head for heights? Come join us on Wednesday the 22nd Feb, when PASSENGERFILMS and UCL Urban Lab are back at the Roxy again with a collaborative night on VERTICAL SPACE.

The feature film will be ‘Man on Wire’ (2008), James Marsh’s look at tightrope walker Philippe Petit’s daring, but illegal, high-wire routine between the World Trade Center’s twin towers. Soundtracked by Michael Nyman and using rare footage of the preparations for the 1974 feat (which is presented as an aerial heist movie), the documentary won the Jury prize during its run at Sundance.

We’ll also be showing Eva Weber’s ‘City of Cranes‘ (2007), which takes the viewer high in the sky to look at the world through the eyes and words of crane drivers – a must-see for anyone who has ever wondered what it is like to work hundreds of feet above the ground. The film is divided into four 3 minute chapters (‘The City Above’, ‘The Last Topman’, ‘Ballet of Cranes’ and ‘Solitary’). The second short will be Simona Piantieri’s ‘Vertical Expectations’ (2011), which explores the nexus between architecture, development and society through an ethnographic analysis of the construction of the Shard, the tallest building in the European Union, located just up the road from the Roxy Bar & Screen.

Simona Piantieri and Eva Weber will both be in conversation after the film and will give a directors' Q&A chaired by Andrew Harris, lecturer in Urban Studies and Geography at UCL. Andrew has recently researched elevated transport projects in Mumbai and is currently developing a website called Tall Tales that collects public stories about tall buildings. Peter Adey, Reader in Human Geography at RHUL and author of Aerial Life: Spaces, Mobilities, Affects (2010), and an upcoming Reaktion book titled Air, will also give a talk considering the cultural connotations of air, particularly the histories of levitation.

This is the third screening of a season by PASSENGERFILMS and the UCL Urban Laboratory on urban architectures.

Wednesday the 22nd February at the Roxy Bar and Screen (128-132 Borough High St, London, SE1 1LB). Starts 7.30pm, entry £4.