Volunteer-run charity Impulse London is showing a film about chemsex and recovery, with talks, a low ticket price and proceeds going to two charities.
LONDON, England (Ditch Pitch) – Shoreditch has a reputation for late nights, and a lot of the borough’s health conversations happen far from the dance floor. This weekend a volunteer-run group is taking one of those conversations to a cinema screen on Bethnal Green Road, with a documentary about chemsex and recovery, a talk after each showing and tickets priced so that cost is not the obstacle.
What is being screened, and where
According to the North East Londoner’s report on the screenings, the film is called Chemtrail: The Journey. It is hosted by Impulse London, the London branch of the volunteer-run Impulse Group, and it looks at chemsex, which the paper defines as drug use to enable, enhance or prolong sex, and at recovery. The directors, John Reavy and Jordi Estape Montserrat, are LGBTQ+, and the film follows four people through their experiences.
The screenings are on 7 and 8 November at 2pm, each followed by a talk, at Rich Mix, 35 to 47 Bethnal Green Road, E1 6LA. Tickets are 5 pounds or pay what you can, and the North East Londoner says the proceeds go to the charities Controlling Chemsex and London Friend. The venue sits just off Shoreditch’s edge, and the paper’s own summary files the event under Shoreditch, which is why it belongs in this column.
A practical note: when I checked Rich Mix’s cinema listings page, it did not show these screenings and carried a note about a technical issue with cinema bookings. That does not mean the event is off, only that I could not confirm it from the venue’s own page. The box office is the sensible place to check before you travel.
Why a Saturday afternoon makes sense
There is something quietly sensible about a 2pm start. Shoreditch is better known for its nightlife than for its afternoons, so a daytime screening with a built-in talk is a different setting: daylight, a seat, a discussion afterwards and no queue for the bar. The format will not suit everyone, but it does lower the barrier for people who would rather learn or ask questions than go out for the evening.
It also follows an earlier event. The North East Londoner says the film comes after Chemtrail: This Is Killing Us, an Impulse event the previous year that used art, photography and dance. Moving from an arts night to a documentary and a talk looks like a reasonable way to broaden the audience, though I have no figures on attendance and the paper does not give any.
The number everyone quotes, and its age
The North East Londoner cites Aidsmap for the claim that gay men who engage in chemsex are five times more likely to have a new HIV diagnosis than those who do not. That figure traces back to a study written up in Aidsmap’s summary of the St George’s research. It looked at 1,840 gay and bisexual men attending routine sexual health appointments at one London hospital between June 2014 and July 2015, and found that 286 of them, about 16.5 percent, reported current chemsex. Among the men who did, 8.6 percent had a new HIV diagnosis, against 1.8 percent of those who did not.
Two things are worth saying fairly. First, the study is from 2018 and Aidsmap itself notes the page is more than seven years old, so it is a useful marker rather than a current census. Second, it describes the patients of a single clinic, so it should not be read as a portrait of every man in East London. That does not undermine the case for talking about the subject; it just suggests the case should rest on current local data, which the charities involved may be better placed to supply than a column like this.
What the screening can and cannot do
A documentary and a talk cannot treat anyone, and the reports do not claim they can. What a community screening does is open a topic that many people find awkward to raise, with a room of others who are in the same position, and with charities attached. If any of this touches your own life, the two beneficiary charities named in the report, including London Friend, are a sensible place to start asking questions, and a sexual health clinic is another.
I write for The London Prat, where the comedy and the serious reporting live on different pages for good reason. If you want the lighter side of the city, browse London humor news or read how to spot a joke in the news. A column about a health screening is not the place to joke, but it is a good place to remind readers that the funny pages and the serious ones need to stay clearly marked, which is why Bohiney Magazine and a Cockney rhyming slang explainer sit in a different corner of my work.
Whatever you make of the scene around it, a low-cost, volunteer-run afternoon with a film and a conversation is a decent use of a cinema. You can find more of my Shoreditch reporting at The London Prat, and I will follow up if the organisers share how it went.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/