Case of Black British Cinema

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Case of Black British Cinema

• Mari Maasilta
• 1.3.2006

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Requirements for passing

• Active participation in the lectures and writing
  the final essay.
• The final essay is based on the lectures, course
  readings and the films. It might be an empirical
  analysis of one the films screened in the end of
  the course or a theoretical reflection of one of
  the topics of the course by using empirical
  examples from the films.
• The essay should be 5 to 10 pages.
• The essays have to left in the post box of the
  teacher (main building Kalevantie 4, C258) not
  later than March 20.

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Possible issues

• The displaced identity of the filmmaker and its
  influence on his/her production.
• Alternative production modes of transnational
  cinema and their influence on the film.
• Authenticity dicourse vs. hybridity discourse in
  the film.

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More possible issues

• What kind of identity positions does the film
  propose?
• What kind of idology does the film propose?
• What kind of genre contract does the film
  propose?

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Structure of the paper

• Aim of the paper research question
• Main concepts, theoretical framework
• Empirical analysis
• Conclusion
• Literature

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General rules for essay writing

• define your main point what is the aim of your
  essay?
• do not underestimate your own opinions and
  experiences but justify your claims and arguments
• give evidence empirical examples, facts
• be exact references to literature

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Black British Cinema

• films made by film-makers of Asian, African and
  Caribbean diaspora
• deal with the British-Asian, British-African or
  British-Caribian experience
• emerged in the context of politics of
  multiculturalism in the beginning of 1980s

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British political and social context of 1980s

• Thatcherist right-wing policy since 1979
• rise of anti-fascist movements (Rock Against
  Racism, Anti-Nazi League)
• politicisation of Blackness

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The first wave Cinema of duty films

• Social issues
• Documentary-realist style
• Direct relation to social crisis
• Attempts to articulate problems and solutions
  to problems within a framework of centre and
  margin, white and non-white communities
• Aims to tell buried or forgotten stories, to
  write unwritten histories and to correct the
  misrepresentations of the mainstream
• A demand for positive immigrant images

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Black British Collectives

• were born as a consequence of social
  unrestlessness and riots against police
  harassment, racism, and unemployment in the late
  1970s and early 1980s
• Finance from Greater London Council (until 1986)
  and Channel Four Television
• Purpose to train minority artists to produce
  their own self-representational films and videos

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• ethnic collectives
• Black Audio Film Collective, Ceddo Film and Video
  Workshop, Sankofa Film and Video Collective (West
  Indies)
• Retake Film and Video Workshop (India and
  Pakistan)
• common features
• challenge conventional forms of representation
  length requirements, collage techniques,
  collective directing, often documentaries
• trained several ethnic and identity filmmakers
  operating nowadays as individual filmmakers

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Handsworth Songs (John Akomfrah and Black Audio
Film Collective , 1986, documentary)
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Territories (Isaac Julien, 1984, documentary 25
mins)
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The second wavePopulist Black British films

• from the middle of 1980s
• no simple focus on racial politics, acknowledge
  the complexity of identity politics (race, sex,
  gender)
• complexity of style, genre and film form
• use popular culture and music as references

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My Beautiful Laundrette (Stephen Frears, 1985)
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The Buddha of Suburbia (Roger Michell, 1993)
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Bend it Like Beckham (Gurinder Chadha, 2002)