Black Stories
Tackling issues of race, representation and identity, this collection celebrates the work of Black storytellers who have enriched our understanding of the Black British experience, including landmark features such as Horace Ové's Pressure (1975) and Menelik Shabazz's Burning an Illusion (1981).
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The Beast Must Die
This enjoyably unusual combination of Agatha Christie-style murder-mystery and gothic chills was the brainchild of Amicus Productions, Britain's chief rival to Hammer Films during the golden era of 1970s Anglo-horror. The film is best known for its gimmicky 'werewolf break' towards the end, where...
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Sweet Thing
In desperation at their mum's new boyfriend, two siblings and their new friend set off on a running wild trek across Massachusetts, crossing paths with a variety of American eccentrics, angels and desperados. Sweet Thing is an intimate, creatively filmed, and fantastically personal film from acco...
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Burning an Illusion
Menelik Shabazz’s pioneering first feature, shot around the communities of Notting Hill and Ladbroke Grove, marked a coming of age for black British cinema. A love story that traces the emotional and political growth of a young black couple in Thatcher's London, it was the first British film to ...
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Speak Like a Child
Three teenagers forge a firm friendship while living in a children's home on the remote Northumbrian coast. Linked by a mutual sexual bond, they are involved in a terrible, life-changing incident that forever ties them together. Based on some of writer Danny Padmore's childhood experiences, Speak...
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Fords on Water
In a nightmarish Thatcherite near-future, disenchanted youths Winston, a black trainee-draughtsman, and Eddie, who's white and unemployed, head off on a raucous road trip journey of self-discovery to the north of England. This impressive, ambitious and distinctly unconventional class struggle dra...
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Jemima + Johnny
The friendship of a young white boy and a black girl reaches out across the generations in this uplifting mid-60s short, directed by South African-born actor and anti-Apartheid activist Lionel Ngakane. Against a background media narrative suggesting ever-worsening racial tensions, Jemima + Johnny...
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White Men Are Cracking Up
Masie Blue is an enigmatic Black Widow figure under investigation by detective Margrave for her involvement in the suicides of successful white men. Through the blurred lines of perception and reality, the myth of the black feminine mystique is explored under the guise of a murder mystery. Writte...
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Ten Bob in Winter
An early classic of Black British cinema about the intriguing social dynamics that arise as a ten shilling note is passed around the black community. A student borrows ten bob from a white man and then in turn lends it to a natty musician. Later, when the student meets an upstanding member of the...
