Development of black film in Britain

The following comments by Joel might help you when you are watching the films. You can also follow the links that take you to sources of more information.

With racial tensions, after years of simmering, finally erupting across Britain's inner cities in places like Liverpool's Toxteth, Bristol's St. Paul's, Birmingham's Handsworth and at the Notting Hill Carnival in London, Margaret Thatcher's axiom 'there's no such thing as society' seemed to ring particularly true for a whole generation of black British youth.

The ensuing social unrest was juxtaposed with, and to some extent exacerbated by, tensions between first and second generation immigrants. The originally optimistic, often middle-class immigrant sensibilities of the Windrush generation was transformed into a predominantly pessimistic, working- and under-class, notion of black Britishness (Commission on the Future of Multi-Ethnic Britain: Report) of the first fully Anglo-Caribbean generation to have come of age in Britain. Each film also set the tone for a series of productions that would re-evaluate what it meant to be black in Britain, from a stridently militant point of view. Previously, productions Sapphire(Basil Dearden, 1959, UK) and Flame in the Streets(Ray Barker, 1961, UK) took a liberal stance, viewing the situation of Britain's demographic change, from the mainstream perspective and still clinging to paternalist attitudes of race and class that seemed somewhat beholden to a bygone era and sensibility.

Both Pressure and Burning an Illusion were released in the wake of black exploitation cinema's peak in the mid 1970s and well after the political impact of the genre's early films had been softened by formulaic storylines, in an attempt to appeal, as the studios saw it, to a broader mainstream audience. With the revolutionary zeal and counter cultural stance of Sweet, Sweetback's Baadasssss Song (Melvin Van Peebles, 1971, USA), Superfly (Gordon Parks, 1972, USA) and The Spook Who Sat by the Door (Ivan Dixon, 1973, USA), giving way to heroines and heroes who, though 'black and hip', forewent the radical content, ghetto politics and activism of their forerunners in favour of an inherently ghetto aesthetic. Just like the commercialised gangsta rap formula at its worst, with the procession of pimps, pushers and hoodlums, that came to personify them, black exploitation films were a means to their own ends, seeking to carve a niche for themselves within the system, not trying to overthrow or transform it.

While characters such as Sweetback (in Sweet, Sweetback's Baadasssss Song), Priest (in Superfly) and Dan Freeman (in Spook) became disillusioned, then challenged and ultimately usurped the system, the protagonists in films like Shaft (Gordon Parks, 1971 USA), Foxy Brown (Jack Hill, 1974, USA) and Cleopatra Jones (Jack Starrett, 1973, USA) were, no matter how marginal, part of the system and operated to uphold the status quo.

It is against this backdrop that both Pressure and Burning an Illusion need to be considered, in the light of the black independent and studio representations of the African American experience, which manifest themselves in the form of black exploitation cinema, and the shift from the Civil Rights Movement to Black Power which helped to fuel the subsequent development of a black British identity and screen presence. The protagonists in both movies undergo a political awakening, reminiscent of Sweetback's and Priest's, but are grounded in a stridently social realist structure, beholden to British cinema, that distances itself from the action-packed Hollywood formula of even the most radical black exploitation movie. For more information about the pioneers of black filmmaking in Britain go to screenonline.

As with any movie, the reading of these films changes as its context shifts with time. In the 30 years since Pressure was produced and released into a cultural milieu of rising unemployment, social unrest and racial instability much has changed. On the one hand, the emphatic and continued mainstream success of black popular culture in Britain, particularly in sports, arts and entertainment, has sparked a more highbrow contemporary interest, as witnessed by recent exhibitions, Black British Style at the Victoria and Albert Museum, Africa Remix at the Haywood Gallery and the forthcoming West Indian Front Room: Three generations of change in the black British home at the Geffrye Museum.

On the other hand, despite the positive presence of black MPs and cabinet ministers, many of the old millstones still weigh heavily around the neck of black Britain. Issues such as police victimisation, limited job prospects and continued failure within and by the education system, highlighted in Pressure and Burning an Illusion, have been constantly recurring themes, virtually definitive of black British youth culture today.

  • How do you think things may have changed over the past 30 years, in terms of race relations and the position of black people in Britain? How have things improved? Or got worse?
  • How do you think your own experience and knowledge of race issues in Britain might influence your reading of the film?
  • Do you think young people react more strongly to racial tension than older people? Or did they in the past?

When you have watched the films, consider the following questions:

  • Why do you think these films were made?
  • How do you think these films differ from mainstream representations of black Britons?
  • What examples of racism are represented in Burning an Illusion and Pressure?
Last Updated: Wednesday, 06-Feb-2008 14:09:42 GMT