The Ponds will be screened on Saturday as part of a free open air event in Dartmouth Park

OUR friends at the Garden Cinema in Covent Garden – one of London’s finest independent picture houses – are joining forces with the New Journal, the Dartmouth Park Film Club and the Camden Film Quarter this weekend to present free open air cinema screenings.

The event is part of this year’s New Journal-organised York Rise Street Party, and the cinema can be found on Dartmouth Park Road from noon onwards, with screenings of Camden-based films – including the critically acclaimed documentary about a year in the life of the swimming ponds on Hampstead Heath.

The Ponds was shot by film makers Patrick Maclennan and Samuel Smith: and they have caught our treasured open space in all its glory, using drone footage as well as interviews with the hardy types who go all year round. The film examines the impact having a dip has on your health, tells the stories of friendships made in speedos and one-piece costumes, and offers some gentle footage of a pastime that so many indulge in.

It also considers the motivation for a regular dip up the Heath – a gentle and timeless documentary that captures the spirit of a past time so many of us know well.

Following the screening of The Ponds documentary, children’s favourite The Greatest Showman features, as do works from the pen and acting skills of Dartmouth Park resident Simon Farnaby. Farnaby – also known to a generation for his work on Horrible Histories – brought the Paddington to the big screen and, more recently, the Enid Blyton classic, The Magic Faraway Tree. He will be on hand for a Q & A.

Another local film to be shown is a documentary called The White Flats, telling the story of the Whittington estate in Highgate Newtown, shot and edited by residents of the 1970s estate. It was made to mark the passing of the architect Peter Tábori, who designed the estate as part of a final-year project at university.

It was built between 1972 and 1979, and the film reveals what life is like in N19 – and why the estate has attracted people who are into British 20th-century Modernism. It benefits from being made by architects Jo McCafferty (Levitt Bernstein), Rachel Stevenson (DMA) and film makers Anna Price and Marc Silver – all residents with a passion for the place they call home.