Films that challenge the status quo
A Piece of the Action
A comedy caper with Sidney Poitier and Bill Cosby as two con men who have to teach a group of excluded children and save the school from a certain white Mr Big. The film is also notable for the way a disabled child is just included as part of the class.
Babylon
The one and only black British film to chronicle the lives of young black men in the inner cities: the culture of reggae music in Britain, the constant harassment by the police because of the Sus laws (Suspicion of committing a crime), and the atmosphere of the early 1980s. It set the tone for upcoming reaction to the Thatcher government and the inner-city riots of the early 1980s.
The Bandit Queen
A story of a lower-caste Indian woman who is abused and raped and who wreaks revenge and havoc by leading a band of the truly dispossessed against the social injustice that surrounds them: a film to challenge sexism in Indian culture.
Battle of Algiers
A seminal classic about the FNL (Algerian Front de Libération Nationale) anti-colonial struggle in Algeria and its brutal suppression by the French government and their paratroopers in the 1950s. A neo-realist film, shot in black and white, using Algerian non-actors, many of whom had been part of the struggle. The film became the 'training manual' for many liberation struggles within Africa and further afield.
Bhaji on the Beach
About four generations of Asian women on an outing to Blackpool.
Boyz 'n' the 'Hood
A positive, coming-of-age depiction of the lives of three young black men in South Central LA, which, though grim in some of its reality, showed that education, and the opportunity for education, was the key to empowerment.
City of God
Tells the lives of Brazilian street children and the gangs they form, how they are forced by poverty into crime and the self-fulfilling dynamic this sets up.
The Color Purple
Tells the story, based on Alice Walker's book, of Celie, a Southern black woman sold into a life of servitude to her brutal sharecropper husband, and how, with the support of other women, she eventually gains the courage to stand up to him and leave. A powerful indictment of sexism in black culture.
Do the Right Thing
Examines the tensions and possibilities in a culturally diverse neighbourhood. It challenged racist policing and segregation in New York.
East is East
A light-hearted, but moving, take on second-generation Asian young people of mixed parentage living in Salford in the 1970s.
Fear Eats the Soul
A Moroccan immigrant in Munich comes up against social and racial prejudice when he marries a 60-year-old cleaner.
Gentleman's Agreement
Exposes the widespread prejudice and anti-Semitism in American society. Gregory Peck, as a journalist, poses as a Jew to gain an insight into the unspoken, yet powerful, 'gentleman's agreement' not to allow Jews into all sorts of institutions.
Kes
About Billy, a 15-year-old, who is abused at home and at school, who finds interest and hope in a baby kestrel. The film shows how state schools fail working-class children.
La Haine
A day in the life of three young friends - Jewish, Muslim and black - in the Paris suburbs, and the institutional racism they have to put up with from the police.
The Life and Times of Rosie the Riveter
This 65-minute documentary inter-cuts old footage, shot in the munitions factories of the 1940s, when millions of women who had been denied access to employment went to work during the War, with colour interviews with the women now, who tell it like it was - harassment, discrimination, sexism and their sense of freedom.
Mapansula
One of the first films that used black actors and managed to tell the story of apartheid from a black perspective.
Missing
About a US author caught up in a CIA-inspired illegal coup against the elected government of another country, whose right-wing father and wife slowly realise the complicity of the US Government. While not specifically naming Chile, where socialist President Allende was killed and overthrown in 1973, and 5000 people were killed and said to be 'missing', the parallels are obvious.
Mississippi Burning
About the fight to find the racist murderers of three civil rights workers in a town that is cajoled by the Ku Klux Klan into colluding in the cover-up, and how it falls apart.
My Beautiful Launderette
About a white racist skinhead (Johnny) and a gay Asian boy (Omar) and their respective cultures and families.
Riff-Raff
A story about working-class life 'on the lump' in the building industry, and the exploitation of black and white workers by unscrupulous bosses. All the builders are played by actors who had worked in the building industry, creating an authentic feel.
Shaft
The first time a Blaxploitation film (exploiting the existence of a large black audience and the general popularity of black music and culture) went mainstream in the US, creating the first black ghetto super-sleuth. Although it featured sexism and reliance on stereotypical ideologies of black male sexuality, it was positive for the black community all over the world, since it was the first representation of a James Bond-like figure fighting inner-city oppression. It also had one of the greatest soundtracks of the 1970s.
Schindler's List
Tells of how a German Nazi businessman uses unpaid Jewish labour in his Polish factory in Krakow. As the Holocaust intensifies, Schindler bribes German officials to let him keep his Jewish workers and manages to save 1 100 of them by the end of the war. A powerful stimulus to discussion on state racism and the Holocaust.
Sweet Sweetback's Baadassss Song
A truly awful film, but very important since it was the first time a black director and a totally black cast and crew had made a feature film in the USA. It was distributed throughout inner-city theatre houses, giving Hollywood the confidence to support black-made films. It is considered to have spawned the Blaxploitation era of films (see Shaft, above).
Trembling Before G-d
Documentary about the strains between being an Orthodox Jew and being gay or lesbian.
Z
About the attacking and eventual killing of a well-known scientist and pacifist by right-wing thugs, with the collusion of the police and government. When a prosecutor successfully brings a case against the perpetrators, the government is overthrown by an illegal coup by army generals. This is about Greece in 1963. The letter Z in the Greek alphabet means 'he is alive'.
