Pioneers of Black British Cinema

The film history of the African and Caribbean diaspora in Great Britain began in the 1960s. While social realist film movements such as Free Cinema had previously predominantly told stories about the white male working class, this period saw the first cinematic explorations of the lived realities of migrants of the so-called "Windrush Generation," who immigrated to the United Kingdom from the British Commonwealth between 1948 and 1971.

The Jamaican actor Lloyd Reckord came to England in the 1950s and questioned the British class system in 1963's Ten Bob in Winter. The South African anti-apartheid activist Lionel Ngakane fled into exile in England in 1950 and, in 1966, revealed a conciliatory perspective on the racist tendencies in London's Notting Hill district in Jemima + Johnny. Caribbean-born musician Reginald Branch – better known by his pseudonym Frankie Dymon Junior – demystified the hippie utopia of "Swinging London" in his 1969 avant-garde film Death May Be Your Santa Claus. The 2018 British Shorts Film Festival dedicated its retrospective "Pioneers of Black British Cinema" at the City Kino Wedding to these rarely shown short films by Reckord, Ngakane, and Dymon Junior. However, as film history has shown, these works failed to launch long-term careers for the filmmakers in the British film industry at the time.In cooperation with Arsenal on Location, the film series Pioneers of Black British Cinema is now being continued in a sense, presenting a selection of groundbreaking works created between the 1970s and 1990s. During this period, filmmakers were increasingly able to question the prevailing ideologies of the (white) film and television industry and contrast them with alternative images of "Black Britain." In particular, the ACTT Workshop Declaration and the founding of Channel 4 television in 1982 opened up new funding opportunities and distribution channels for independent film productions. Various workshops emerged in this environment in the 1980s, including Ceddo Film and Video, the Black Audio Film Collective, and the Sankofa Film and Video Collective.

The selection of five film programs considers intersectional perspectives and explorations of Britain's (post)colonial history. The works reflect the tensions caused by the Conservative Thatcher government and the influences of historical events such as the London New Cross Fire of 1981 and the Handsworth Riots of 1985. The influence these films have had on contemporary directors such as Steve McQueen (Small Axe), Amma Asante (Belle), Kahlil Joseph (BLKNWS: Terms & Conditions), and Barry Jenkins (Moonlight) is also unmistakable. (Henning Koch)

The program was curated by Henning Koch. With special thanks to Ngozi Onwurah and Simon Onwurah.

At the City Kino Wedding, Müllerstraße 74, 13349 Berlin

Arsenal on Location is supported by the Capital Cultural Fund.