Studies in European Cinema

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Black Film British Cinema II

edited by Clive Nwonka and Anamik Saha, London, Goldsmiths Press, 2021,
248 pp., £21 (paperback), ISBN 978-1-9126-8563-9

William Brown

To cite this article: William Brown (19 Feb 2024): Black Film British Cinema II, Studies in
European Cinema, DOI: 10.1080/17411548.2024.2319876

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/17411548.2024.2319876

Published online: 19 Feb 2024.

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STUDIES IN EUROPEAN CINEMA

BOOK REVIEW

Black Film British Cinema II, edited by Clive Nwonka and Anamik Saha, London,
Goldsmiths Press, 2021, 248 pp., £21 (paperback), ISBN 978-1-9126-8563-9

A ‘sequel’ to the book brought out by London’s Institute of Contemporary Arts following the
first Black Film British Cinema conference in 1988, Black Film British Cinema II marks
another milestone in terms of work on Black British cinema, bringing together, as Erica
Carter identifies in her preface, ‘activists, academics, writers, curators, and industry research­
ers’ (xviii) to reflect on the state of Blackness in relation to film in the UK. If that original
event and publication brought together such luminaries as Alan Fountain, Coco Fusco, Paul
Gilroy, June Givanni, Stuart Hall, Colin MacCabe, Kobena Mercer, James A. Snead and Judith
Williamson (see Mercer, 1988), then this new publication leads to a triple reflection: that the
authors assembled in this second book might go on to have such a profound effect on film,
media and cultural studies as their original counterparts; that the intervening period has seen
so much happen in terms of the developing discourses surrounding race and western
societies, from Kimberlé Crenshaw’s articulation of intersectionality as a critical concept
(Crenshaw 1991), through to the development of Afropessimism, and the Movement for
Black Lives; and (and yet?) how much of a hole has been left in British discourse relating to
cinema and Blackness since the passing of Stuart Hall (which is not to mention the too-soon
demise of James Snead, or the death of Alan Fountain).
If the standing of the authors in Black Film British Cinema II has yet to reach the
scale of a Hall (or a Gilroy, or a Givanni, or a Mercer?), the expanded number of
authors in this second book conveys at least indirectly the deep influence of that author –
and a literal expansion outwards of the ideas of Hall and his band of fellow thinkers to
a powerful collective that nonetheless exudes quality and much promise of greatness
(maybe we shall in 30+ more years be looking back and noting the remarkable careers of
various of the authors assembled here). In spite of this quality and promise, though,
Nwonka and Saha outline in their introduction not only a context that includes the
‘whitewashing’ of the BAFTAs in 2020 (1), but also an acknowledgement that ‘the study
of black film within the British academy remains restricted’ (8). In other words, much
work remains to be done in order to reckon with Blackness within the context of British
cinema and culture more generally – not just in order to confirm its status as ‘marginal,’
but perhaps especially in order to throw into relief how so much work on British cinema
and culture (and how so much of British society) is founded, often unthinkingly, around
constructions of whiteness. That is, the key task ahead is not so much centripetally to
recolonise Blackness, but centrifugally – or, as Akwugo Emejulu (2022) might put it,
fugitively – to decolonise whiteness.
Opening Part I: The New Politics of Representation in Black Film is Sarita Malik,
who identifies this ‘new politics’ as one that ‘repudiates globalisation, hybridity, and
“unassimilable” forms of cultural difference and [which] seeks to ridicule and protect
itself against what is now commonly termed “woke” culture’ (23). Drawing upon Hall,
Malik identifies three chronological ‘acts’ in Black film since the publication of the first
book: a period of ‘openness and critical interventions’ between 1987 and 1997; the
‘Fragmentation of the “Black” in Black British Cinema’ between 1997 and 2007; and
‘Black British Film in the Creative Economy,’ which runs from the financial crisis of
2 BOOK REVIEW

2008 to the present. The first ‘act’ saw the emergence of Ceddo, Sankofa and the Black
Audio Film Collective, as well as important women filmmakers like Martina Attille,
Maureen Blackwood and Elmina Davis, with Black film production involving ‘a range of
collective, creative interventions where the interrogative, interruptive and aesthetic were
converging to assert a critical, visual presence’ (26). The second involved ‘national
television broadcast . . . becoming a primary vehicle for black film rather than the
theatrical distribution to qualify as British cinema’ (29). The commercial imperative of
the burgeoning ‘urban film,’ as typified by Bullet Boy (2004), saw a fragmentation (or
a de-fanging of the leftist political bite) of Blackness, although women directors like
Blackwood, Ngozi Onwurah and Avril E. Russell managed to produce notable short
films during this period. Finally, the financial austerity that characterised ‘act three’
nonetheless saw John Akomfrah, Steve McQueen and Amma Asante become key figures,
while there were also various programmes, seasons and initiatives to promote Black film,
including Givanni’s Pan African Cinema Archive and Priscille Igwe’s The New Black
Film Collective (TNBFC). ‘Limited opportunity’ for Black filmmakers also led, however,
to ‘Black flight,’ whereby ‘black directorial and acting talent has progressively moved to
the US for recognition’ (36) – as reflected in the 2020 BAFTAs so white. In this way,
Malik contends that whatever de-marginalisation has taken place since the first Black
Film British Cinema book is accompanied by a somewhat problematic re-
marginalisation.
Kara Keeling then discusses the ‘digital regime of the image’ via Akomfrah’s concept
of ‘digitopia’ (42), suggesting that ‘digital cinema fulfils a dream of Third Cinema by
truly revolutionising the mode of production of images by making it possible for anyone
with an iPhone and editing software to make a film’ (44). Looking at Akomfrah’s Last
Angel of History (1996) as an Afrofuturist text, Keeling sees the film as ‘celebratory of
and optimistic about the possibilities that reside at the intersections of techno-culture
and Black masculinity’ (47–48), before considering Arthur Jafa’s Love is the Message, the
Message is Death (2016) as ‘a visual exploration of Greg Tate’s likening of Black
existence in the US to an alien abduction story,’ and its more recent refutation in
Martine Syms’ ‘Mundane Afrofuturist Manifesto’ (51). In this way, Akomfrah and Jafa
speak to each other, much as Keeling stages a communication between Black American
and Black British cultural scholars.
Maryam Jameela charts how the evolution of Blackness in Britain ‘from a black-white
dichotomy, to the use of political Blackness, to Blackness as a more discrete entity’ (57)
has impacted on Black Islam, since the ‘narrow usage’ of the term identified in 1988 by
Snead leads to anti-Blackness within Muslim circles. Not only does this concomitantly
re-centre whiteness (61), but it also flattens differences within and across Islamic
communities, thereby ‘flatten[ing] cultural and historical specificities’ (62). If a post-
11 September 2001 world saw Muslims become conflated with terrorists, then so did
films like Yasmin (2004), Brick Lane (2007) and Four Lions (2010) see Muslims homo­
genised as South Asian – with no mention of Black Muslims here or in the 2016 Casey
Review.
In Part II on Black Film Aesthetics, Richard T. Rodríguez considers the
‘Transnational Desires and Queer of Colour Politics in the Work of Isaac Julien,’
focusing in particular on Looking for Langston (1989) and The Long Road to Mazatlán
(2010). Highlighting a clear history of ‘transatlantic cultural traffic’ (74), Rodríguez
proposes that the former suggests ‘an elegant genealogical constellation of cultural
workers whose mutual influence have [sic.] led to the enduring lineage of
a transatlantic diasporic cinema’ (75), while the latter similarly ‘conjoins seemingly
 STUDIES IN EUROPEAN CINEMA 3

disparate temporal and spatial trajectories to fashion a queer of colour transatlantic

narrative’ (77) – with the transnational thus being an essential tool for understanding
a ‘Black British here and now’ (79).
Richard Martin, Clive James Nwonka, Ozlem Koksal and Ashley Clark then engage in
a roundtable discussion of Steve McQueen’s work – up to Small Axe (2020), but focusing
mainly on Hunger (2008), Shame (2011) and 12 Years a Slave (2013). There is good con­
textualisation from Nwonka, who also provides perhaps the summary statement of a loose but
enjoyable discussion that involves some promising observations. McQueen’s work, for
Nwonka, demonstrates how ‘non-mainstream aesthetics, even in mainstream films, are
a crucial part of how . . . [McQueen’s political] commentary is telegraphed’ (90), something
that is perhaps made most clear by the televisual nature of Small Axe.
Rabz Lansiquot’s essay on ‘Circumventing the Spectacle of Black Trauma in Practice’
is one of the highlights of the collection, arguing that ‘the repeated witnessing of this
level of [antiblack] violence in the visual realm [of film and media] contains its own
form of violence, one that echoes far beyond the initial violation’ (91). Discussing his
own curatorial work, Lansiquot queries the capacity of representation to contribute to
changing the world, since depictions of Black suffering can ‘contribute to [rather than
subvert] the power relations inherent to looking, and being looked at’ (97). Indeed,
Black suffering becomes another form of labour produced by Black bodies (98) – and by
no means a guarantee of justice. Lansiquot proposes Kat Anderson’s John (2019) as
resisting ‘the trope of presenting anti-Black violence in the gallery space’ (104) – even if
a ‘liberatory Black film practice, like Black liberation itself, will certainly not emerge
overnight’ (105).
Lansiquot’s essay leads smoothly into Part III, on curatorship, exhibition and arts
practice, where So Mayer offers an overview of the circulation of Black film in the UK,
drawing especially on Givanni’s work, and highlighting the changing definitions and
terminology surrounding Blackness in relation to British film. Mayer notes the contin­
ued struggle for distribution for Black British filmmakers (114), while championing
alternative approaches – not defined here by the distinction of the gallery from or
over the cinema, but by the need to deploy oral histories and subjective accounts that
highlight the ways in which encounters with Black film have been curated and pro­
grammed in the UK; that is, due to a lack of mainstream distribution and press, Black
programmes are always distinctive encounters in curated spatial scenarios (119) –
including TNBFC, Film Africa, the London African Film Festival, the UK Nollywood
Film Festival, the British Film Institute’s African Odysseys, the WOC Film Club, the
Reel Good Film Club, Images of Black Women, African in Motion, Afrika Eye, the
Cambridge African Film Festival and more. . .
James Harvey then returns us to Akomfrah’s work, understanding it as ‘fragmentary;
experimental, avant garde, essayistic, bricolage, exploratory, poetic, ruminative, and
artistic’ (127). Of particular note is Harvey’s observation that ‘[t]here is an important
institutional intervention in play when Akomfrah chooses to work in the gallery space,’
where ‘[s]creenings of films by black filmmakers in a typically white space remain rare’
(135). That is, Akomfrah seeks to democratise the gallery space, while his work on the
environment, including Vertigo Sea (2015), raises questions about how ‘the rich and
powerful so often appear to share an activist’s concern for environmental damage, yet
have no empathy for the human beings that occupy that environment’ (140).
Alessandra Raengo also considers Akomfrah, including the digital nature of his recent
gallery work, the ‘migratory’ nature of which ‘mirrors the migration of the diasporic
subject into frames and spaces from which she was previously excluded’ (146).
4 BOOK REVIEW

A characteristically detailed essay, Raengo looks at Akomfrah as a cosmopolitan film­

maker who also fits into a lineage of migrations that include Harriet Jacobs and Olaudah
Equiano. Drawing on work by Fred Moten, Raengo argues that the still figure in
Akomfrah’s work, especially The Nine Muses (2010), is ‘anaoriginary’ (or without
origin), and thus ‘anacinematic’ (or outside of cinema), while his ‘multi-screen practice
can humble the viewer into a different relationship to their own viewership, cosmopo­
litanism, and ontopolitics of movement’ (157).
Shelley Cobb and Natalie Wreyford open the final part on the ‘Politics of Diversity’ with
a survey of (the lack of) BAME women working in key roles in the British film industry,
identifying how ‘tokenism’ is at work mostly with the employment of Black women (175),
with productions involving numerous women of colour, such as The Receptionist (2018)
being highly exceptional. As they conclude: ‘[t]he British film industry needs to work harder
for and have more belief in BAME women’ (181).
Tess S. Skadegård Thorsen then provides a similar analysis about the Danish film
industry – an essay that raise eyebrows for its inclusion (how is this about British
cinema?), but which nonetheless does function as a means of throwing indirect/shared
light on the UK, especially in its perception that the Danish Film Institute’s ‘ethnic
diversity’ initiatives ‘position the (competence of) ethnic minority actors and film
professionals as the problem, meanwhile only providing one solution to the issue: self-
improvement’ (197–198). While most Danish readers might not make it to Black Film
British Cinema II, readers might all the same be wary that the way in which the ‘Danish
model for diversity in film . . . relies on the continued erasure of those most affected by
oppression’ (198) might also apply in many other contexts.
In the penultimate chapter, Melanie Hoyes identifies how so many talented Black
British performers have successfully pursued their careers in the USA because of the
paucity of opportunities in the UK, where stereotyped roles also persist. Hoyes also
notes that diversity data can be difficult to obtain and that ‘[w]orkforce monitoring
would allow for a constant stream of accurate data across a range of data points which
would allow for longitudinal and intersectional analysis of the barriers people face’
(212).
Finally, broadcaster and artist Bidisha powerfully rounds off the collection with
a reflection on ‘Film, When Film Doesn’t Reflect You.’ Starting off with how she was
paid a measly £75 by an arts organisation to film a performance of her own poetry, she
documents how the film industry is unwelcoming to women of colour, not least because
cinematic ‘Englishness’ is typically white (‘as a viewer and as a critic, the sheer whiteness
of cinema is staggering, as is its cultural insularity’ [219]). Forced to make one’s art in
private renders the process ‘an issue of class, contacts, entitlement, and privilege’ (220) –
with Bidisha highlighting how her own creative evolution has resulted from a ‘privileged’
loss of personal finance.
It is a striking place to end the collection, especially as Bidisha is not afraid to
pinpoint exactly what a book like Black Film British Cinema II is really all about, namely
the ‘race and racism’ (223) that are by definition at work in order for this book to exist
as such. Given the quality of work on display here, especially the theoretical density and
analytical ferocity of various chapters, the potential is certainly immense for these
authors indeed to become figures as celebrated as their predecessors from the first
volume. That said, as Bidisha makes clear, the support systems for ensuring this are
not necessarily in place. Not only does this make the achievements of those earlier
writers all the more remarkable, but it reinforces the need to support the work of these
scholars and the filmmakers, curators and artists whom they critique and represent.
 STUDIES IN EUROPEAN CINEMA 5

References
Crenshaw, K. 1991. Mapping the margins: Intersectionality, identity politics, and violence against women of
color. Stanford Law Review 43, no. 6: 1241–1299. doi:10.2307/1229039.
Emejulu, A. 2022. Fugitive feminism. London: Silver Press.
Mercer, K., ed. 1988. Black film British cinema. London: ICA Documents.

William Brown
University of British Columbia
[email protected]
© 2024 William Brown
https://doi.org/10.1080/17411548.2024.2319876