Previously unseen footage of Grenfell Tower residents pleading with their MP and landlord to end their mistreatment in the months before the 2017 disaster is to be broadcast for the first time.

Recordings of acrimonious meetings with Victoria Borwick, the then Conservative MP for the area, and Peter Maddison, the council landlord’s senior executive in charge of works at the time, shed fresh light on how the concerns of residents were handled in the run-up to the fire on 14 June 2017.

They reveal how Borwick urged a mother who was concerned that works could leave her without water for days to live up to the group’s claim to be a community and “take baths with people next door”. Sheila, a grandmother who lived in the tower for 32 years and died in the fire, complained to Borwick and Maddison that she was so exhausted from complaining about problems with the lifts and water that she had collapsed at one point.

The footage was captured by Constantine Gras, an artist commissioned by the Kensington and Chelsea tenants management organisation to produce a promotional film about the refurbishment, and will be broadcast tonight on Channel 4 in Grenfell: The Untold Story.

Other people who died in the fire and are seen in meetings challenging their treatment include Dennis Murphy, Mariem Elgwahry and Steve Power. Ed Daffarn, the 16th-floor resident who helped lead efforts to get the landlord to improve its behaviour towards tenants before the fire, was filmed telling Maddison: “The work has to be done, but they don’t have to treat us the way they have treated us.”

It comes after the Grenfell Tower public inquiry restarted on Tuesday following the summer break amid widespread anxiety and anger about forthcoming plans to finally demolish the 24-storey building, which the government says has become structurally unsafe. The bereaved and survivors of the disaster say they have not been properly consulted on the plans to bring down the building. Sandra Ruiz, who lost her niece in the fire, said the building was “sacred ground” and “bringing down the tower without proper consultation of those most affected is desecration”.

The footage inside the residents’ meetings captures anger and despair at the way they were being treated as the GBP10m refurbishment works progressed.

Borwick was at the meeting where David Collins, a leader of a Grenfell residents group, reported that 46% of people whom they had spoken to were not happy and felt the landlord was ignoring residents.

Borwick responded: “Let’s be really honest. It’s not the job of your MP to sort it out; it’s the job of your local councillor.”

Sheila, a grandmother who lived in the tower for 32 years and died in the fire, told Borwick and Maddison: “Whoever runs this place, you never see them; they become faceless. But never ever once have you heard them mention a human being who lives there. It’s all about the building. It’s all about that.”

She said she had been complaining about the lifts and the water and “one day I collapsed in the hallway because I had been so ill and I hadn’t got the energy to do this”.

Borwick told the Guardian she was on the residents’ side.

“I felt the residents were treated with contempt, and … I helped them set up the residents association in order to try and get a better negotiating system and arrangement with the contractors and council officers. It was a scandal that they were without hot water and heating – particularly in the winter, and I was hoping that they could help each other out in the short term. Obviously as the MP you have no direct power, but I was happy to sit in on the meetings and try and help the residents get their problems resolved.”

Maddison said during one of the meetings that he was “absolutely happy and determined to resolve any issues” and he wanted to “investigate and resolve problems people brought to him”.

He told the programme that while the inquiry was in progress, it would not be appropriate to comment and expressed his “deepest sympathies and condolences” to the bereaved, survivors and their families.

Mariem Elgwahry, who died in the fire at the age of 27 alongside her mother, described in a separate meeting with councillors for the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea how she was “emotional” because of the problems and she was “trying to fight where we can”.

The film-maker also captured Mehdi El Wahabi, then about 7, wearing a Spiderman cap, and drawing a tower block at his community art project. He described a story of how “once upon a time there were two really long towers and they were having a fight to see who was the longest one and then this tower wins”. He included aliens and a picture of a boy who “lived happily ever after”. He was one of 18 children who died in the fire.