Pressure (1975)
British Film Institute
Main image of Pressure (1975)
Director Horace Ové
Production Company British Film Institute Production Board
Producer Robert Buckler
Screenplay Horace Ové
Samuel Selvon
Director of Photography Mike Davis
Editor Alan J. Cumner-Pryce
Herbert Norville (Anthony 'Tony' Watson); Oscar James (Colin); Frank Singuineau (Lucas); Lucita Lijertwood (Bopsie); Sheila Scott-Wilkinson (Sister Louise)
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A dramatisation of the tensions that exist between first and second generation West Indian immigrants in the Notting Hill area of London.
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Set in Ladbroke Grove, West London, an area with a large Caribbean population since the 1950s, Pressure (d. Horace Ové, 1975) explores the assimilation (or otherwise) of Caribbean people into British society.
The film focuses on one black teenager, and his attempt to find his way in a white-dominated society. As Anthony's initially high hopes are repeatedly dashed - he cannot find work anywhere; potential employers treat him with suspicion because of his colour - his sense of alienation grows. While his family come from Trinidad, Anthony was born in Britain and is British. When a Black awareness meeting is violently raided by the police, and Anthony sees these 'organised forces of repression' at work, his political awakening begins.
Pressure is a product of its time, but the issues and themes it explores remain relevant to the black experience in Britain today, including the cycle of educational deprivation, poverty, unemployment and antisocial behaviour. The depiction of police harassment and the controversial 'sus' (suspicion) laws is echoed by the similar, and equally controversial, 'Stop and Search' policy of today. The film also explores media under-reporting and misrepresenting of black issues and protests.
The film is shot in a gritty realist style, with an often documentary feel. It convincingly captures the spirit of the 1970s, a pivotal period for race relations in Britain and the politicisation of a generation. The performances - from a cast including many non-professional actors - are also excellent.
What is surprising is how forthright and critical the film is of the British system, in what were very sensitive times. The police are presented as corrupt and overtly racist, indeed a casual racism seems to permeate all aspects of society. It is also critical of the black response, and isn't afraid to show friction within the Black community between those who are disillusioned, with little hope and content to exist on the dole and those who are politically active and fight for change, and between the older generation, content to know its place, not wanting to 'stir up trouble', and a younger generation willing to fight for its rights. Pressure remains a key Black British film, which helps to demonstrate how modern multi-cultural Britain was shaped.
Babylon (1980)
British Film Institute
Main image of Babylon (1980)
Director Franco Rosso
Production Company Diversity Music
National Film Finance Corporation
Chrysalis Group
Lee Electric (Lighting)
Producer Gavrik Losey
Script Martin Stellman
Franco Rosso
Photography Chris Menges
Music Dennis Bovell
Brinsley Forde ("Blue" David); Karl Howman (Ronnie); Trevor Laird ("Beefy"); Brian Bovell ("Spark"); Victor Romero Evans ("Lover")
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A young Rastafarian toaster (rapper) with Reggae Sound System Ital Lion, hopes to rise above the trials of his daily life and succeed at a Sound System competition.
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London circa 1980. Margaret Thatcher is newly installed in 10 Downing Street, causing fits of gloom in the theatre, film and television world. Punk rock is making a noisy exit from the music scene, to be succeeded by the easier-on-the-ear mod and ska revival. Then along comes Babylon (1980 d. Franco Rosso). Notwithstanding the X certificate, and the questionable use of subtitles, Babylon was an instant classic, akin to that other legendary reggae music film, The Harder They Come (Jamaica, d. Perry Henzell, 1972).
Babylon is a potent mix of music and social commentary, flawlessly photographed by the celebrated Chris Menges (Local Hero, 1983; The Killing Fields, 1984; The Mission, 1986) and with an extraordinary 'starry' cast headed by actor-musician Brinsley Forde (Brinsley Dan) as 'Blue', the alienated young man at the heart of the story. British born of Guyanese parents, Forde was a successful child actor (The Magnificent Six and ½, ITV, 1968-71 and The Double Deckers, BBC, 1970-71), later joining British reggae group Aswad.
Screenwriter Martin Stellman (Quadrophenia, d. Franc Roddam, 1979) and director Franco Rosso (Dread, Beat An'Blood, tx. BBC, 7/6/79) have crafted a superb, truthful film that stands up more than twenty years later.
Set predominantly in South London, it presents a portrait of the young black community in London different from the tabloid stereotype. These black people are not muggers, rapists or chronic thieves. They are ordinary young black guys at the sharp end of inner city survival with dreams and fears of ordinary young people in general. Except of course that just like the subletted garage where they house their equipment and play their tunes, their lives are hemmed in by the predictability of poverty, disillusion and the randomness of violence that can erupt at any time.
The final scene, in which police raid the dancehall while Blue and the sound system defiantly plays on, is both frightening and euphoric.
Burning an Illusion (1981)
British Film Institute
Main image of Burning an Illusion (1981)
Director Menelik Shabazz
Production Company British Film Institute Production Board
Script Menelik Shabazz
Photography Roy Cornwall
Editor Judy Seymour
Music Seyoum Nefta
Cassie McFarlane (Pat Williams); Victor Romero Evans (Del Bennett); Beverley Martin (Sonia); Angela Wynter (Cynthia); Malcolm Fredericks (Chamberlain)
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A young British-born black woman begins to question her attitude to love and life and desire for middle-class respectability and security through marriage.
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"Where can I get a copy of this?" The security guard at the college where I was screening Burning An Illusion seemed almost embarrassed to ask. Like the teenagers in my workshop, he'd been hooked. I'd seen him hovering in the background, pretending to check locks, walking closer as the story deepened.
Twenty years after it was made, why does Menelik Shabazz's first feature, a simple tale of a young girl's relationship, hold such attention? Firstly, because it foregrounds the experience of a young black British woman, breaking with the tradition of placing white males at the center of a story. Even today, that is highly unusual. Secondly, it focuses on her life as a young woman, not as a symbol of black experience.
Pat, an ordinary working-class London girl, has a caring family, a job she enjoys and her own flat. Like all drama, the film is about characters facing conflicts. But unlike most dramas about black people up till then, for most of the story it dramatises personal conflicts, not socio-economic or political ones. Pat's goal is to settle down. The most radical thing about Burning An Illusion is that it's about black people who aren't radical. It's about a male-female relationship.
Shabazz neatly avoids trapping his main characters inside the bubbles ('victim'/'noble savage') that suffocate most black figures in movies. This is the third reason for the film's longevity: designed as fallible people, his characters can breathe and grow. For the first forty minutes we're in a love story. We see the courtship between Pat and her suitor, Del, culminating when he moves in. Then Pat's 'mister right' turns wrong.
The second half of the film dramatises how social forces and character traits work to derail Pat's goal, the breakdown of their relationship and how she and Del react to the pressures they face. When they become politicised by the end of the film they've changed because of the experiences the plot has taken them through. We're shown how and why they change.
The final reason why the film still grips is that, twenty years on, nothing else quite like it has been made. The guard was disappointed to learn he couldn't get hold of a copy easily. And UK audiences are still similarly deprived.
Territories (1984)
Courtesy of Isaac Julien
Main image of Territories (1984)
Director Isaac Julien
Production Company Sankofa Film And Video
St. Martin's College Of Art
R.P.M. Film Studios
Textual extracts Edward Braithwaite
Michelle Cliff
Paul Gilroy
Kobena Mercer
Cast: Maureen Blackwood, Andrea Julien, Kevin Graal, Nadine Marsh-Edwards, Antonia Thomas (Voices Off-Screen); Colin Newman, Bertram, Bruno, Pedro, Peoples War Sound System (Players)
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An experimental documentary about black culture. Critiques the ways traditional media represent black people and portrays the Notting Hill Carnival as an event about resistance.
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Territories (d. Isaac Julien, 1984) is an experimental documentary about the Notting Hill Carnival. It locates the event within the struggle between white authority and black youth, in this case over the contested spaces of the carnival, and reflects on its history as symbolic act of resistance. The film makes the case using montage: cutting carnival scenes with archive news reports - police surveillance to rioting in the street - and crossing looks of desire with alienation, from police to reveller, woman to man, man to man. Add to this a disembodied, political critique and trenchant images of police violence and the audience soon becomes aware that the documentary itself is part of the resistance.
In 25 minutes, Territories invites the viewer to question everything and to protect her self-identity by whatever means available. As an exposé of the way in which the power of carnival has been neutralised by mainstream documentaries this film has a rhetorical power. It suffers a little, however, from narrative vagueness.
But it is also a joy to watch. The camera is everywhere, recording and remembering, the images are fluently edited and there is a profusion of visual ideas, some brilliant. However it is easy to become disoriented in the experimental storm - the heavily intoned voice-over soon loses its meaning.
Territories is an unusual, provocative early film from the Sankofa Film and Video collective.
Or just check out this link
http://www.screenonline.org.uk/film/id/445608/
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I N J U S T I C E
http://www.injusticefilm.co.uk/page1.html
FILM BACKGROUND
Injustice is a documentary feature film that follows the struggles for justice by the families of people that have died in police custody. Between 1969 and 1999 over one thousand people died in police custody in England. Not one police officer has ever been convicted for any of these deaths. Injustice depicts how Brian Douglas, Joy Gardner, Shiji Lapite and Ibrahima Sey met violent deaths at the hands of the police and documents a five year period when their families came together to fight for the truth.
Injustice took seven years to produce. Since its launch in July 2001 the police have tried to censor the film. The Police Federation and individual police officers threatened legal action at cinemas and at the film makers who refused to stop screening the film and instead took it on a national tour showing it anywhere they could. The audience took over one cinema and projected the film when the cinema manager, under threat of the police, refused to. Critically acclaimed in its own right, Injustice also gained news coverage across all national channels as well as on CNN.
Injustice has been described as the most politically controversial film of recent years. It has moved cinema audiences to tears and inspired others to action with its portrayal of the struggles for justice by the families of people who have died at the hands of police officers.
Injustice has gained an international reputation and has been screened at over 50 film festivals around the world. Since November 2001 the British Film Institute have been distributing the film around regional film theatres. The film is also running at the Prince Charles Cinema in Leicester Square, London. Countless community screening have been held across the UK. The film makers and families hold Q&A sessions at all screenings. Injustice was nominated for an Index On Censorship Award and won Best Documentary at the BFM International Film Festival in 2002 as well as a National Social Justice Award and the award for Best Film on Human Rights at the One World Film Festival in 2003. Despite this success television broadcasters in the UK, including Channel Four and the BBC, have refused to show the film.
Injustice has been screened in the European Parliament generating a debate by politicians there. In the UK the scandal that Injustice exposes, and opposes, has caused deep concern and has forced a political reaction to these human rights abuses. As a result of the film the Attorney General was forced to announce a state review into the Crown Prosecution Service. The families of victims of police brutality are using the film as a powerful weapon to demand justice.
Rage
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97 minutes
UK (1999)
15
starring Fraser Ayres , Shaun Parkes , John Pickard , Shango Baku , Wale Ojo , Alison Rose , Rebecca Ella
directed by Newton I Aduaka
other credits
RAGE FILM REVIEW
Gritty British debut feature attempting to explore racial issues through the lives of three dissatisfied south London youths to the beat of a distinctive hip hop soundtrack
Taking on the writing, directing and producing of a film yourself has the potential to result in mishap; Aduaka's Rage is a case in point. The plot is achingly simple: mixed-race rebel Rage (Ayres) wants to make a record with Godwin (Parkes), a black musician and Thomas (Pickard), a restless white boy. A bungled burglary attempt only seems to set them further from their goal.
If the characterisation and detail were up to scratch, the lack of tension would scarcely matter. As it is, despite being desperate to be a British La Haine, Rage ends up a mess of scenes involving the boys' parents, friends and enemies (mostly cops, natch), few of whom can actually act. Any potential is undermined by an obvious lack of funding, the results of which are impossible to ignore (poor sound and lighting, clichéd dialogue, etc.).
Hip hop fans may appreciate the soundtrack, but this still feels like a film that needs a good deal of work on it.
Emotional Backgammon (2004)
Cast & Crew:
Leon Herbert, Wil Johnson, Daniela Lavender, Jacqueline De Peza
Using backgammon as a metaphor for the game of love, this dramatic comedy takes an insightful look at the war between the sexes. When John's perfect world is shattered by his girlfriend Mary's abrupt departure, he seeks relationship advice from his friend Steve. Cynical Steve (Leon Herbert) directs John (Wil Johnson) in a manipulative attempt to get Mary (Daniela Lavender) back. But even with a strong strategy, can the game of love really be won?
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