The Story of Lovers Rock (UK 2009)

Directed by Menelik Shabazz. 100 minutes, in colour and black and white.

This film was screened at the National Media Museum in Bradford. And the audience were as much part of the event as the film. The film is a documentary about a less-well known music genre and the audience clearly included fans and aficionados. There was applause, even cheers, ‘oohs’ of recognition and frequent laughter. As a less-well informed observer I did not recognise all the tropes but it made for an entertaining and informative viewing.

Before the film I was not even sure what constituted Lovers Rock, (there is a pretty good page on Wikipedia). It is a popular musical genre that grew out of reggae, soul, rhythm and blues and rock in the early 1970s: and it was pre-dominantly popular in Afro-Caribbean communities. You only have to listen once to know that it was a romantic genre. We had scenes of couples dancing and romancing to its mainly slow and alluring rhythms. It seems to have been influenced by the Sound system culture of South London: there is nearly always a strong bass line. Three entrepreneurs, Dennis Harris, John Kpiaye and Dennis Bovell, invented the actual title when they set up a new independent record label.

I wouldn’t have known any titles or artists from the genre, but I remembered some of the songs when represented in the film. The genre offered opportunities in particular to women singers: performers like Carol Thompson and a young female trio Brown Sugar. Better-known successes include Louisa Marks with “Caught You in a Lie” in 1975, followed by Ginger Williams’ “Tenderness”: Janet Kay’s “Silly Games”, which reached number 2 in the UK Singles Chart in 1979: and in 1986 Boris Gardiner’s “I Wanna Wake Up With You”.

Like much Black culture of the period Lovers Rock was marginalised. There were some telling recollections by both producers and artists about how the industry cold-shouldered this very popular music. Only a few of the titles made it into the official UK charts. I can remember back then that a friend used to join a Record company’s minibus of young people who toured record shops buying up a particular single in order to assist it up the charts. Presumably such drives missed out Afro-Caribbean south London.

Shabazz’s film manages to combine a detailed and evocative picture of the music, its artists and its fans. He also laces it in both the wider music and social cultures: the film includes footage of the resistance events of 1981. But the film is also very witty. There are some delightful recollections by fans of both the high and the low points of their Lovers Rock days. In particular, there is a recurring scene with two of the Afro-Caribbean All-Star Comics who provide a sort of Greek chorus to the unfolding story.

The film ended with loud applause and a Q & A with the director: unfortunately I missed this, as I had to run for my train home. This was a shame because Menelik Shabazz is an important and long-time contributor to British film. The Museum’s event also included a rare screening of his 1981 feature, Burning an Illusion. This is one of the key black features of the decade: and Shabazz is able to combine a trenchant portrait of the experiences of the black communities with a sensitive depiction of individual relations. Depressingly the screening relied on a DVD because there is not a 35mm print in good condition available.

There is a website for the film, [still under construction], http://www.loversrockthefilm.com/synopsis.html

Menelik Shabazz is currently trying to develop a distribution for the film. When [hopefully] it arrives near you go and see it.

Babylon (UK-Italy, 1980)

White on black

The first black British feature Pressure preceded this by five years and there aren’t, nearly 30 years later, many other black British films (I can think of Babymother, 1998); Babylon is, institutionally, a white film but deals brilliantly (I guess) with the young black experience of the 1970s. The ’70s was not a good decade and the endemic racism is presented vividly; it probably seems another, bigoted and ignorant, world now but we must not be complacent: the Met, for example, seems to have learned little after Stephen Lawrence.

Focusing on Brynsley Forde’s character (he was the lead singer of Aswad), a young man trying to find his way in a hostile world, the grim South London streets form the backdrop to a tragic ‘coming of age’ narrative. The music’s great as is Chris Menges’ cinematography that looks superb in the DVD transfer.

Black History Month: Babymother (UK 1998)

Wil Johnson as Byron and Anjela Lauren Smith as Anita

Babymother is one of the few Black British films to receive a UK release of any kind since the 1980s, but even so, it is likely to be better known abroad where it was shown in festivals. In the UK it received only a very limited distribution and has been seen mainly on Channel 4 television. The first TV airings showed cropped images from what is a widescreen (CinemaScope) film musical (which bizarrely links it to the early Cliff Richard ‘Scope musicals such as The Young Ones (1961). The film represents a conscious attempt to avoid the typical ‘burden of representation’ that sits heavily on Black British films – it isn’t concerned with the ‘problems of life in the inner city associated with racism and deprivation’. Instead it celebrates one aspect of Jamaican life in London – ‘dancehall’, with its distinctive musical style and dramatic costumes.

A Jamaican film, Dancehall Queen (made on digital video by the legendary Don Letts) was released in the UK in 1997 and did good business in South London. This may have influenced Henriques. Some critics have also suggested that Babymother may owe something to the look and feel of Bollywood. Henriques himself speaks about the long tradition of specifically Jamaican culture including the links to the Saturday night ‘blues’ party which often carried over into Sunday church.

The film is set in Harlesden, the western part of the London Borough of Brent, arguably an area of London that has been defined through successive generations of new communities – Irish, African Caribbean and Asian. The plot sees a young single mother (the ‘babymother’) – Anita, a beautiful talented singer who has not found the confidence to assert herself in the dancehall culture, especially when she has felt herself in the shadow of the ‘babyfather’, Byron, played by Wil Johnson (now a leading UK TV actor). But when Byron steals one of her lyrics, she finally decides to take him on in the competitive arena of the dancehall. The film plays this narrative from the musical (which sees characters bursting into song as in the classical musical as well as in the dancehall) against a more familiar family melodrama about Anita’s mother and older sister. This has an interesting twist. A full synopsis and commentary is available on Screenonline. Though the Screenonline account is accurate, I don’t think it quite picks up the unique qualities of the film. Certainly this is a film to divide audiences. If you are expecting the usual ‘social realist’ drama about inner-city London, you’ll be disappointed. But if you like the idea of a vibrant musical with some reality thrown in, I think it works. If you don’t know about dancehall, it is extremely colourful with the performers wearing outlandish costumes (a bit like the carnival costumes seen at Notting Hill or other Caribbean carnival events). It is a completely Black musical, with no white characters as such. Screenonline suggests that this is a weakness, but it seems fine to me. A TV series called Babyfather appeared in 2001. There was no direct connection between the film and the series which both focus on the concept of single parents, but Wil Johnson also appeared in the first episode of the TV series.

Anita and the children

Writer-director Julian Henriques was born in Yorkshire. He studied psychology at Bristol University and worked as a lecturer, policy researcher, and journalist before becoming a television researcher. In the 1970s, he started the journal Ideology and Consciousness (later I and C) with a group of young psychologists and social theorists. Their aim was to bring together critical work in psychology with work on the subject and subjectivity coming out of European social theory (structuralism, post-structuralism and psychoanalysis), as well as continental feminism. He has made documentaries for LWT, the BBC and with his own production company for Channel Four. We the Ragamuffin (1992) was his first narrative short film, Babymother his first feature film. Henriques taught film and television at the University of the West Indies, Mona, Jamaica, and currently works at Goldsmiths College, University of London. Here is his staff page at Goldsmiths.

Producer Parminder Vir began her career in 1978 as an Arts Administrator with the Minority Arts Advisory Service, moving to the Commonwealth Institute and eventually becoming Head of the Race Equality Unit in the Arts and Recreation Department of the GLC. In 1986, she moved into film-making and began working as a researcher for the BBC. She set up her own production company in 1994 and produced several award-winning programmes. In 1996 she had joined Carlton Television as a Consultant to the Director of Programmes, implementing a strategy for achieving cultural diversity on and behind the screen. Since 1998 she has become a leading figure in the film and television industries, serving as a UK Film Council Board Member from 1999-2005 and setting up Ingenious World Cinema to aid production of films from “emerging markets, including India, China, South Africa, Brazil, Argentina and the Diaspora” as part of the larger Ingenious Media. (She is also married to Julian Henriques.) 

Amazon shows that there are still some copies of the Film Four DVD available.

(Notes updated from a screening in 2002)

Black History Month: Young Soul Rebels (UK/Fra/Ger/Spain 1991)

Chris and Caz

 

Young Soul Rebels (YSR) is an ambitious attempt to make a statement about an African-Caribbean-Briton’s role in society at the time of the Queen’s Jubilee in 1977, in the framework of a whodunit thriller. The central characters, the DJs Chris and Caz, run a pirate radio playing funk and soul music, in contrast to the white rebel’s music of choice at the time, punk rock. Chris has ambitions to break into mainstream radio but finds he’s too ‘black’. Chris is gay and the film opens with their friend, TJ, being murdered in a park where gay men meet.

It’s a thriller that considers what it meant to be gay and black before Britain recognised itself (as far as it actually does) as a multicultural society (and the position of women) all on a low budget British Film Institute (BFI) production. Although 1970s Britain was deeply racist, it was the decade when debates about radical politics and identity were common, in academia at least, and Isaac Julien, who directed YSR, was one of the founder members of the radical Sankofa collective (which was one of the co-producers of the film). Channel Four Films was also involved in the production, and the film exemplifies the channel’s commitment, in its early years, to minority groups.

One thing that hasn’t changed since YSR was made, is the dearth of films by black, British filmmakers. The BFI has retreated from its cultural remit and no longer supports production, leaving that to the market-orientated UK Film Council, and has even hived off its book list to Palgrave Macmillan. Gurinder Chadha was another ‘ethnic-minority filmmaker’ to have benefited from BFI support with her short I’m British but… (1990).

The October (2008) edition of Sight and Sound listed 12 ‘vital’ productions supported by the BFI Production Board: The Bill Douglas Trilogy (My Childhood, 1972, My Ain Folk, 1973, and My Way Home, 1978); Pressure (1975); Radio On (1978); Burning An Illusion (1981); The Draughtsman’s Contract (1982); The Gold Diggers (1983); Caravaggio (1986); Distant Voices, Still Lives (1988); London (1994); Under the Skin (1997). Although the BFI managed to survive the philistine onslaught of Thatcherism, it’s clear that Blairite politics’ embrace of the market has destroyed meaningful state support for alternative voices in cinema. It is important that all minority voices have the opportunity to speak about their lives and the medium of film offers the possibility of a long shelf life on DVD (unlike ‘minority’ television) and even distribution worldwide, on the festival circuit at least.

For many reasons, then, YSR is an important film however although I enjoyed it when I first saw it (probably on Channel 4) a couple of years after it was released it now looks to be a worthy but inept film. There are two central problems: the performances of the lead characters, Mo Sesay and Sophie Okonedo excepted, and the film’s failure to integrate the generic elements with the political project.

The unconvincing performances are partly due to the cliché-ridden script where lines pop into your head just before characters speak them. Every time the ‘thriller’ narrative comes to the fore, ‘sinister’ music appears as if ‘on tap’. Some of the film is so bad that I wondered whether it was an example of Brechtian distanciation, but there’s no indication that this was intended. The use of contemporary music, however, is very successful ranging from Funkadelic’s One Nation Under the Groove, Culture’s When the Two Sevens Clash and X-Ray Spex’s Identify. They help evoke the era that is very successfully recreated by costume, location and the Jubilee celebrations.

The ‘staging’ is, on occasions excellent, such as the neo-fascist riot at the climactic concert; however this is immediately followed by the risible death of the villain who somehow manages to pull himself into a fire-filled hole in the stage.

While there’s nothing wrong with being ambitious, Cyril Nri is probably correct when he writes:

Perhaps the “sexuality, gender and national identity” of the black gay British male needed to be explored on a smaller scale. (Nri, no date)

Julien’s previous film was Looking for Langston (UK, 1988) an ambitious ‘performative’ documentary about Langston Hughes. His subsequent career suggests he’s more comfortable working on the artistic margins. However, it is an indictment of British film culture that we don’t have a number of films that address questions about British identity, black or otherwise.

Reference

Cyril Nri (no date) Screenonline, http://www.screenonline.org.uk/film/id/497077/, accessed October 2008

Black History Month: Introduction

October is ‘Black History Month’ in the UK. It’s a celebration of the importance of Africa and its peoples and diaspora around the world. The US has a month in February, but in the UK, October became established after an initiative by the late (and very lamented in these parts) Greater London Council in the 1980s. You can find out more at the Black History Month website. 

Having noticed the celebrations over the last few years, which now occur not only in London but across the UK, we decided to celebrate the month by focusing on some of the films from Africa, North America and Europe that deal with African culture and diaspora culture. We are compiling lists of interesting films and also intending to review one or two significant titles.

To kick off, we’d like to celebrate the latest film to receive the restoration treatment organised by the Martin Scorsese-backed World Cinema Foundation. This was announced at Cannes in May and a further news item appeared in the Observer today highlighting a screening at the London Film Festival. The film in question is Touki Bouki, directed in Senegal in 1973 by Djibril Diop Mambéty.

Touki Bouki

Touki Bouki is an important film for several reasons, but most of all because it proved that African filmmakers could make a diverse range of different kinds of films, including those that were seen as ‘avant garde’, but also as youth pictures with a ‘New Wave’ feel. A pair of young lovers attempt to leave Senegal and have adventures presented in an unconventional narrative structure. The pdf downloadable from the World Cinema Foundation website above has a short statement from the great Malian filmmaker Souleymane Cissé:

Djibril left his country with the dream of finding success and solace in Europe. He soon discovered, however, the cruelty of life. While his dream fell apart little by little Djibril found he was unable to leave “Europe”, his host country. That was when returning to Africa became the real dream for him. Ending his days in Africa was a dream he would never fulfill.

Touki Bouki is a prophetic film. Its portrayal of 1973 Senegalese society is not too different from today’s reality. Hundreds of young Africans die every day at the Strait of Gibraltar trying to reach Europe (Melilla and Ceuta). Who has never heard of that before? 

All their hardships find their voice in Djibril’s film: the young nomads who think they can cross the desert ocean and find their own lucky star and happiness but are disappointed by the human cruelty they encounter. Touki Bouki is a beautiful, upsetting and unexpected film that makes us question ourselves.

The restoration has involved a digital process to recover the colour range of the original. This is at the 2K international standard and a 35 mm interneg has been produced at the end of the process. The restoration was carried out by Cineteca di Bologna at L’Immagine Ritrovata Laboratory. It sounds wonderful, so if you get the chance, check out the LFF. The film screens at 18.30 on 24 October.

A second film spotted in today’s Observer also deserves mention. Babylon is a British film from 1980 featuring a fantastic cast of young Black British acting talent, many of them also leading musicians. Brinsley Forde, lead singer of Aswad and former child actor plays a reggae DJ with a sound system. He and his crew face plenty of obstacles as they fight a ‘battle of the bands’, not least the racism endemic in London at the time. The music was overseen by Denis Bovell and the cast also includes Trevor Laird and Victor Romero Evans (as well as a host of other British TV regulars). For the last couple of years there has been an Italian DVD available of dubious provenance (not certificated for the UK):

Here is the trailer for the Italian version:

 

Now there is a new UK DVD from Icon Home Entertainment. In 1980 the film was rated ‘X’, now it is a ’15′.

If the film is not directed or written by a Black filmmaker, does that invalidate its status as a film to be celebrated as part of Black History Month? I don’t think so – my memory is of a film that felt authentic for the streets of London in 1980 and an important assertion of Black British culture. I’m looking forward to watching it again. There’s a useful Guardian plug for the film here, commenting on director Franco Rosso’s pedigree as a filmmaker representing the UK reggae scene on film.