It's our old friend Kickstarter providing the projects for this month's round-up of worthwhile London endeavours.
The Lock-In
The dream of every hardened drinker: the lock-in, the opportunity to drink illicitly in the arms of a complicit landlord who is taking his licence, his very living, into his own hands. But surrounded by drunken cretins every day and night, some of them no doubt begging for a clandestine, after-hours session, what happens when a landlord finally snaps?
The Lock-In is a short film telling the story of Colin, the landlord of an Irish pub in London, who has had enough of his filthy, inebriated patrons and embarks on a Sweeney Todd-style mission to rid the city of, well, people like us. Film-makers Will Norris and Craig Gallivan are looking for a few grand to make their film and since it may well be chastening to anyone whose been on a Londonist pub crawl we'd recommend you back it, and teach us all a lesson. Rewards include spending a day on set (at the Barley Mow in Marylebone) or even playing the part of one of Colin's sloshed victims in the film.
London Underground short story magazine
'Short stories for short journeys' goes the tag line of this new magazine, clearly aimed at people who don't ride the District line from Upminster to Hammersmith every morning. Aesop Magazine is intended to be a free to read print and e-magazine of short stories, distributed on the Underground on a monthly basis. They are currently trying to raise just £2,000 to get a proof-of-concept sorted out, to appeal to advertisers.
What's not to like about that idea? Rewards start at just a fiver, and you can get personalised thank you letters and your name in the first edition of the magazine in return for backing something that would make us all a bit happier, with the possible exception of the people who clear up a mountain of Standards at the end of the day.
Street-Fighting Woman
The writer Steve Thompson and the artist Sergio Drummond are working on what could be a highly entertaining graphic novel that they're looking for financial help with. Street-Fighting Woman tells the story of Lola, an American woman wrestler based in London, scrapping all-comers in the city in 1924 and attempting to play the amateur detective on the side.
As far-fetched as such a character sounds it's unlikely to make for a boring read, though you'll want to be comfortable with a 'monstrous cult of werebears and tentacle-headed men' to get involved. Rewards for backing the book include unique copies of the book, ink sketches of selected characters and of course the hearty thanks of the men behind the project.
10th Discovering Latin America Film Festival
The globally renowned Latin film festival returns for a 10th outing in late autumn, running from 27 November to 4 December at the Tate Modern and the Odeon Covent Garden. This year the festival will donate the proceeds to Association La Alianza in Guatemala, a charity set up to provide housing and protection for the thousands of Guatemalans left homeless and abandoned during the country's civil war, which ended in 1996 after an incredible 36 years.
Thirty films from Latin American film-makers will be shown, but the organisers need some extra funds to ensure its programme can go ahead smoothly. Rewards include various festival passes, invitations to meet the film-makers and tickets to a special gala night to celebrate the festival and the work of Association La Alianza.
The Mobile Museum
They don't make 'em like this any more. They really don't — Ford stopped making the Iveco truck in 1993 but that hasn't stopped London artist Verity-Jane Keefe unearthing a 1991 edition of this mighty beast and setting about turning it into a mobile museum. And as unlikely as it seems, the destination of this installation on wheels is to be 11 housing estates across the London Borough of Barking and Dagenham.
At this stage the museum is empty, the idea being to travel the borough for five months gathering information, collecting, cataloguing and making a museum of Barking and Dagenham. Along the way it hopes to offer 'a new insight into contemporary Barking and Dagenham, and its place within London and the wider Thames Gateway'. Mobile libraries don't pay for themselves of course, and in return for chipping in petrol money you can be rewarded with posters, DVDs, screen prints, your name on a plaque inside the museum and, wait for it, 'a personal walking tour of an estate in Barking and Dagenham'.