The image conjured in most people’s minds at the mention of the ‘Wild West’ is that of cowboys and gun-slinging outlaws – almost always white men. Cowboys, as the name suggests, were experts in herding and caring for cattle. Historians estimate that, at the height of their time, <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/lesser-known-history-african-american-cowboys-180962144/">1 in every 4 cowboys was Black</a>. Yet <a href="https://www.thirteen.org/wnet/ranchhouse/pop_blackcowboy.html">Black cowboys</a> are kept out of most of the narratives and lore of the American West today.
The appeal of the classic Western film for many people is the idea of justice. Westerns value honour, and the stories often depict one or several individuals seeking revenge or retribution against someone who has wronged them. The justice systems of today operate around abstract laws that are often inherently unjust, contrasting to what we find in the world of the Western, where the ‘heroes’ take the law into their own hands.
In almost every way except for the actors we see on screen, <a href="https://platformonline.uk/posts/our-critics-picks-for-the-bfi-london-film-festival-2021">The Harder They Fall</a> is a typical Western. The film opens with the protagonist Nat Love’s (Jonathan Majors) origin story, setting the scene for the adventure that’s about to unfold. After witnessing the brutal murder of his parents at the hands of outlaw Rufus Buck (Idris Elba) and his gang, Nat Love makes it his mission to exact revenge. Along the way we encounter numerous impressive characters, especially Stagecoach Mary (Regina King), a strong woman in her own right who also serves as the ‘damsel in distress’, and Cherokee Bill (LaKeith Stanfield), infamous for his quick-draw abilities and calm demeanour, to name a few.

Nat Love is one of the most famous Black cowboys, thanks to a memoir he wrote which cemented his legacy. The Life and Adventures of Nat Love (1907) describes how Love, born into slavery in Tennessee, headed West aged 14 and began working as a cowboy for large cattle operations in Texas and Arizona. Over the years he spent as a cowboy, Love drove cattle across the United States and down into Mexico. He writes about encountering a range of infamous figures of the old West on his travels (including Buffalo Bill and Jesse James) and stumbling into a number of thrilling situations, from being captured by Native Americans and escaping, to witnessing and participating in gunfights.
Though the veracity of some of the stories recounted in this memoir has been questioned by historians, it is one of the only first-hand accounts of a Black American cowboy from the late 19th century, thus incredibly valuable in recording the existence of Black Cowboys. Love quit the cowboy business in 1890 and his memoir was published in 1907. To this day, he remains a Black folk hero to many.
Director and co-writer Jaymes Samuel says the idea to make a Western came to him while strolling through Kilburn, London. Having grown up watching classic Westerns on the BBC, he became enamoured with the genre and wanted to tell a story that put Black cowboys at the forefront. In Samuel’s The Harder They Fall, Nat Love is described as an outlaw who targets other outlaws, and it becomes evident that he and the Nat Love of history share only a name and an era.

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The Harder They Fall succeeds as a Western. Accompanied by an exciting <a href="https://open.spotify.com/album/3whjvbBxG7j2FfTImRdqBw?si=EcITQCqkQESH5cw4u64KUg">soundtrack</a> consisting of music from across the Black Diaspora, and filmed against stunning landscapes, the film is invigorating and seductive. I find myself unable to take my eyes off the screen. Having fallen for the allure of the old West myself earlier this year, it is fitting that the first proper Western film I see is one with all the visual energy I associate with the genre, but filled with faces like mine. I was engrossed by everything, from the range of distinct characters, to the costumes and the sharp-tongued dialogue. Everything about this film is enticing. Granted, the vastness of the story being told and the number of characters means that they are quite two-dimensional, though attempts are made to give some background and purpose to a few. The comic-book style of the action is, however, the main attraction. Though the pacing falls off slightly in the final third of the film, the meeting between Nat Love and Rufus Buck all but makes up for it, revealing a ‘truth’ which changes your perspective on the earlier events of the film.
Not a lot is known about the real Rufus Buck, other than that he and his gang went on a crime spree in 1895, attacking people indiscriminately on the Indian territory of the Arkansas and Oklahoma area. They were captured and hanged by law enforcement not long after. His character in the film is a notorious and ruthless outlaw with a dedicated gang. The story gives Buck two ‘shots’ at redemption, the first being early in the film when he and his gang take over a Black settlement and set their sights on buying it to give the citizens a fixed home, during a time when Black people were not allowed to settle anywhere for long. He attempts this with brutality and little mercy. Then there is his character&#8217;s origin story, only revealed in the final confrontation with Love.

This film would stand on two strong, Western legs even without using the names of real historical figures. The risk that audience members might confuse the story they see on screen with the lives these people lived is abated with a disclaimer before the film opens, but why use those names at all? Considering how the existence and contributions of Black cowboys is still mostly unknown, The Harder They Fall could bring these names into homes worldwide thanks to its Netflix distribution. The film will also introduce Black cowboys into the popular imagination, which is vital when too many of the Black stories told constrain us to a set of roles and particular narratives.
Nat Love’s first-hand account of life as a Black cowboy made him a hero to many, and his portrayal in The Harder They Fall will hopefully only extend this legacy and prompt more people to look into his vast and fascinating life. I enjoyed the fact that race was not the explicit point of the story, though there are subtle suggestions of its significance throughout. Films with majority Black casts and/or Black leads have become associated with narratives which centre racial trauma – as if joy, complexity and the full scope of life cannot be imagined for such characters. It is high time that this changes. In period films like The Harder They Fall, it is hard and disingenuous to dissociate entirely from race; but the film succeeds at acknowledging the history, without centring Black pain for the sake of it.
The Harder They Fall has everything that makes the Western genre so exciting: a compelling protagonist on a mission, beautiful imagery, exciting action, a sprinkling of romance and lots of music. An enthralling way to expand existing imaginations. In Westerns, justice is always served, a fantasy with never-ending appeal.

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An enthralling depiction of social justice and retribution in the Old West blows apart the typical narratives of the Western and brings new possibilities to life.

The Harder They Fall: Reimagining Westerns for the Netflix generation

As both a woman of colour who has received maternity care from the NHS, and as a midwife who advocates for justice and dignity for marginalised women, I have always been keen on investigative documentaries that expose institutional injustices. I therefore anticipated watching <a href="https://www.channel4.com/programmes/the-black-maternity-scandal-dispatches">The Black Maternity Scandal</a><a href="https://www.channel4.com/programmes/the-black-maternity-scandal-dispatches"> by Channel 4 Dispatches</a> to see the metaphorical glass ceiling being broken by words and actions of truth. Keen public interest in maternity care has always been present due to the vivid experience the majority of women face when giving birth, tying all mothers together through a sense of shared humanity regardless of race. After all, birth is possibly the most intensely emotional, spiritual and physical experience of a woman’s and birthing person’s life.
The comfort of having access to the NHS in a high income country means we often take live births for granted; any deviations from this expectation appear to be relegated to a long lost pre-anaesthesia past, or across some far away border in a country seemingly too poor and undeveloped to help itself. But negative birth experiences, even traumatic ones, are very much present in modern, high income countries too. Although maternal mortality rates are significantly lower in the UK than in countries still suffering the ischaemic insults of colonialism, a <a href="https://www.npeu.ox.ac.uk/assets/downloads/mbrrace-uk/reports/MBRRACE-UK%20Maternal%20Report%202019%20-%20WEB%20VERSION.pdf">report by MBRRACE UK</a> published in 2019 that collected data on all reported maternity incidents between 2015 and 2017 in the UK, exposed a shocking statistic: that Black women were five times more likely than white women to die as a consequence of pregnancy and childbirth. This statistic raised many eyebrows in the UK as such an indication of inequality was not thought possible in a society that considers itself post-racial.
More recently, The Lancet released a systematic review of nine studies <a href="https://www.thelancet.com/series/miscarriage">analysing miscarriage in Europe and Northern America</a>, and concluded in their key findings that Black women were more likely to experience miscarriage in comparison to white women. The study did not expand on why this has arisen, but added that risk factors included stress from night shift work and environmental factors such as ingesting pesticides. These are more likely to affect impoverished communities which largely include people of colour. The study thereby reflects social neglect of Black women in relation to their wellbeing and reproductive health.
Though the UK’s maternal mortality inequality was known in 2019, and many were advocating for change around race in maternity and healthcare, it was only after the murder of <a href="https://www.platformonline.uk/tag/george-floyd/">George Floyd</a>, the most viewed public lynching in history, and the subsequent anti-racism campaign, that institutions were shocked into holding conversations about the racial disparities they housed. A consequence of this activism led to Channel 4’s The Black Maternity Scandal, a 30-minute documentary, which bravely delves into this racial disparity.
Presented by Rochelle Humes, a singer and TV presenter of mixed white and Afro-Caribbean heritage, the documentary did well in bringing to the forefront the bitter inequality of Black women suffering higher maternal mortality than every other ethnic group, but unfortunately, it did little to address the true source of these disparities.
The documentary did include well-known professionals in the maternity world such as Mars Lord (Activist and Doula) and Professor Marian Knight whose name is first on the authors list of the MBRRACE UK report. The inclusion of these voices added credibility to the investigation, and well-complimented the anecdotes of other women interviewed about their respective harrowing experiences in facing maternal mortality and morbidity, which worked to solidly humanise the people behind the statistics. This was a much-needed element in the discourse around this unjust topic.
As a midwife, I understand the instinct we sometimes have to defend our work and colleagues when confronted by media that calls into question our practices and clinical outcomes, but this confrontation is vital in building partnerships with the women we serve, to develop care for all, and to tackle inequality. The documentary did well to highlight the NHS’ responsibility to Black mothers, one that it is evidently not upholding, but it did not even scratch the surface of institutional racism, the effect of colonial history, or actually even mention the word ‘racism’, which insinuates a hesitancy in the editing, and belies the urgency of its opening message.
Though The Black Maternity Scandal did mention that ‘the system’ is biased against women with social complexities, and fleetingly touched upon class, there was very little discussion that unpacked these multi-layered components which lead to the shocking and important disparities in maternal mortality in terms of race. It can be argued that 30 minutes was not enough time to enter such a thickly complex topic, but this proved to be the documentary’s most potent handicap. The need for more time meant that discussions around unconscious/racial bias, the role of poverty, migrant experiences, mental health complexities, difficulty accessing healthcare and austerity were left wanting. These conversations, had they happened, could have been contrasted to the experiences of affluent white women to reflect inequality not just in healthcare but in all fabrics of society.
This silence on institutional racism runs in parallel to the recently released <a href="https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/974507/20210331_-_CRED_Report_-_FINAL_-_Web_Accessible.pdf">Sewell report</a> by the UK government’s ‘independent’ committee on race and ethnic disparities. The document gallingly declared that there was categorically no systemic racism in the UK, that minorities experience poorer outcomes derived from their cultural ‘attitudes’ rather than any misdemeanour the British may have imbued in their systems, and that remarkably, the UK is a beacon example for racial equality which European countries should endeavour to replicate. Not only is this negated by the findings of the MBBRACE report, but it is also a concrete insult to women of colour who face very real threats by our current healthcare systems.
On the subject of class in particular, I was expecting more commentary, as the UK is persistently classist and class is profoundly predictive on a child’s prospects, but unfortunately the issue of class seemed to be blanketed over by the notion that it didn’t matter all that much – that a Black middle class woman would be just as affected by racial disparities as a Black woman from a working class background. I strenuously disagree because, from my experience, the impact of institutional racism is more severe and insidious for working class Black women. This is reflected in my own work in healthcare, where Black working class women are more likely assumed to be ‘difficult’ or uneducated, and is explored further in an article by <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/nov/28/toxic-concoction-women-colour-pay-highest-price-austerity">Maya Goodfellow that describes the extra burden</a> working class women of colour face through austerity. By neglecting to address the extra burdens of Black working class women and their maternal health outcomes, the narrative of the documentary held a very middle class gaze.
Though I appreciated the documentary attempting to conclude with remedial actions to correct the racial disparities, such as ‘Continuity of Carer’ also known as case-loading, I was frustrated by the brevity with which it was mentioned. Continuity of Carer is a model of work which ensures that a pregnant woman or birthing person receives the majority of their care through one midwife. This enables good relationship-building, less room for inconsistencies, and is a <a href="https://www.england.nhs.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/national-maternity-review-report.pdf?PDFPATHWAY=PDF">proven method</a> to protect health and promote dignity. However, it is a model of work that is not feasible for all midwives and is often employed by staff without children of their own, as the work requires high availability and commitment to many on-call shifts through the night and day. Of course, having children is not needed to be a good midwife, but considering the forcefully female dominion of midwifery, many of the workforce continue to have children of their own (such as myself) making work as a continuity of carer midwife incompatible with having a family, and calling into question the longevity of the plan. The documentary visited Newham Hospital and briefly interviewed a continuity midwife and her client, who both expressed positivity, and though this was encouraging to the viewer, lacked much needed fibre to fully understand the benefits and difficulties of the continuity model in our current healthcare system.
Midwifery professionals of colour also face disparities in the workplace, which was just jointly reported on by the <a href="https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5fc52bcaf7cf8c754046992e/t/6092d7853bb4505b999ac766/1620236167034/What+we+need+to+thrive_+ASAM+and+SoAC+report+2021+%283%29.pdf">Association of South Asian Midwives and the Society of African &amp; Caribbean Midwives</a>. The report displays the shocking treatment these staff face, and if staff are not well supported in the NHS, then women and birthing people will undoubtedly be inhibited from accessing the best care the NHS could give.
Overall, the documentary is a decent watch for advocates against racial disparities in health, as it does bring to the forefront of societal awareness the appalling racial inequality and indignity faced by Black women in the UK, which is certainly needed in order to bring about change. The documentary was not long enough to do justice to the ‘whys and hows’ of this racial disparity, which was unfortunate and frustrating, but it inspired hope that change, or at least awareness, is on the horizon. What is now needed is for institutions, organisations and government to take heed of these warnings, commit to further research into the effects of institutional racism, and step up to the responsibility they hold, in protecting the lives and wellbeing of the most vulnerable women in our society. This they can do by critiquing their own established systems which metastasise institutional racism, and holding the people within those systems to account.

Black Maternity Scandal

Channel 4’s Dispatches missed out important factors on class and institutional racism in its brief exploration of maternity care experienced by Black women.

The Black Maternity Scandal: A Lens on Racial Disparity in Healthcare

“Haunting is one way in which abusive systems of power make themselves known and their impacts felt in everyday life, especially when they are supposedly over and done with (slavery, for instance) or when their oppressive nature is denied…” Avery F Gordon 
African Apocalypse is not your regular feature film, and throughout its <a href="https://player.bfi.org.uk/rentals/film/watch-african-apocalypse-2020-online">runtime of 88 minutes</a> it allows us to reflect and navigate the multifaceted space between documentary and historical drama in a way that is innovative, haunting and truly captivating.
The film itself is a non-fiction retelling of Joseph Conrad’s contentious novel Heart of Darkness and, like the book, the film highlights the brutal legacies of ‘civilised’ European expeditions during the height of colonial rule. I was fortunate enough to speak to both the director Rob Lemkin and the co-writer <a href="https://platformonline.uk/articles/author/femi-nylander/">Femi Nylander</a> shortly after the film’s release where we discussed the intricate plot and themes that are investigated throughout the film.
African Apocalypse starts off in Oxford as we are introduced to our narrator and guide, British-Nigerian activist and poet, Femi Nylander. Throughout the film we follow Femi and two other local guides on a personal and spiritual journey through the country of Niger to unearth the cruel legacy of the French imperial captain, Paul Voulet.
Voulet’s story begins in 1899 when he is tasked with securing the Chad Basin to unite all of the French territories in West Africa; however, whilst undertaking this mission, Voulet went rogue leaving behind a trail of death and destruction in his wake. Throughout Femi’s voyage across Niger, we encounter the Hausa people, who were deeply affected by the violence. The Hausa people are the largest ethnic group located throughout north-western Nigeria and Niger. They are well known for their agricultural practices and exquisite craftsmanship and a vast majority of the population can be found in rural locations. In order for Voulet to complete his excursion he had to cross their land and this is where things began to get worse. The story of Voulet and his destructive expedition may not be well known in the west, but the descendants of the Hausa people have not forgotten. They have not forgotten how Voulet and his men rounded up their families and committed unspeakable evils. They have not forgotten the stories of how Voulet decimated villages – and those of you who watch this film will surely not forget too.

What I found so astounding about the film was how effortlessly it explores a multitude of political issues, such as France using the <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2017/07/macron-francafrique-170721190500965.html">Franco-African</a> policy to mine and export Uranium ore for over 40 years, as well as the economic and political fallout that follows the creation of borders, human rights, ecological destruction, and the generational trauma that looms over the afflicted communities. The themes that African Apocalypse explores are multi-faceted and complex, but what the film achieves is that it opens up a dialogue about the repercussions of colonial violence and gives the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Hausa">Hausa people</a> a chance to tell their side of the story to the world.
In a strange way Rob and Femi’s work truly captivated me, particularly as I saw myself in Femi. As a Black British citizen with Jamaican heritage, my very existence within the British Isles is predicated on Britain’s colonial past, and the same applies to a large majority of us, as <a href="https://www.ourmigrationstory.org.uk/">migration has played a huge role</a> in shaping Britain as we know it today. To be a Black person or person of colour, exploring the forgotten histories of colonialism that intersect with one’s own history repeatedly forces one to encounter a range of emotions – emotions that more often than not lead one to feel like they are being be split in two. This moment of fragmentation is elaborated by the late <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/frantz-fanon/">Frantz Fanon</a> in his text, Black Skin, White Masks, where he recalls a similar feeling of being torn asunder by the weight of the history of race: “I was responsible not only for my body but also for my race and my ancestors. I cast an objective gaze over myself, discovered my blackness, my ethnic features; deafened by cannibalism, backwardness, fetishism, racial stigmas, slave traders, and above all, yes, above all, the grinning Y a bon Banania.” Blackness and Britishness, or even Blackness and European identity are not always understood to be synonymous. Although this is not the core focus of the film, it is a theme that is explored rather naturally, and it is a feeling that many Black people, people of colour and those with dual heritage living in the west will be able to relate to.

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This feeling of being split in two is referred to as “double consciousness” by 20th-century thinker W. E. B.Du Bois (and, more recently, British historian Paul Gilroy). Du Bois writes in his book The Souls of Black Folk: “It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others… One ever feels his twoness, – an American, a N****; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.”
During our interview, I asked Femi how he felt the notion of double consciousness impacted him, and the way he interacted with those around him during the making of the film. “What I think is shown on screen is how transformative the experience was and that happened in such an accelerated way due to the filming process,” Femi remarked. “I became more and more comfortable, and was able to interact more naturally with the people of the region. And I think that process was made easier as being someone of West African heritage, of Nigerian heritage, so literally just from the neighbouring country. Being able to then integrate, learn more about the culture and sing with the people was much easier to do than if you’re coming in as a complete outsider.”
The fact that the film has emerged during such a pivotal <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/may/29/britain-glorify-violent-past-defensive-empire-drug">political awakening</a> in our current moment is not insignificant – Femi himself was an organising member of the ‘Rhodes Must Fall’ movement in Oxford and we’ve seen this come full circle with the international <a href="https://www.the-platform.org.uk/2020/06/07/the-closing-credits-of-black-lives/">Black Lives Matter</a> protests of 2020 and the removal of statues of slaveowners beginning with <a href="https://gal-dem.com/i-didnt-think-2020-would-have-me-crying-tears-of-joy-at-the-death-of-a-statue-but-here-we-are/">Edward Colston</a> in Bristol. I asked both Rob and Femi whether they thought the film was a salute to the decolonisation of knowledge and a challenge to European accounts of history. Rob answered, “I think that the film has a two-fold impact… In so far as we&#8217;re letting Nigerians and the Hausa people tell their own story, and we&#8217;re giving them a platform to tell their stories. And secondly, because we&#8217;re telling the story of Europe, very critically, we&#8217;re saying, this is also a story about France, and it&#8217;s not a pretty one.”
African Apocalypse perfectly slots into the conversation of ongoing colonial violence in the global context. Speaking further about the film’s timing, Femi comments: “There have been a number of conversations about colonialism happening all over the world last summer and even before. Statues of <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/a17b87ec-207d-4aa7-a839-8e17153bcf51">Leopold of Belgium</a>, who is referenced in the film, have been coming down in Belgium, and colonialism has become a hot topic. If the film had come out at another time, then the idea would have been for the film to have sparked a conversation about colonialism. Whereas now, it kind of slides into an ongoing conversation, which I think is good.”
The non-fiction re-telling African Apocalypse takes us on a historical and emotive journey. It breaks down a number of topics that some may shy away from for being too academic or too violent to explore. The film opens up the conversation of colonialism and the lasting impact that it has on particular communities around the world. If you are ready to delve into the conversation, African Apocalypse is a must watch.
African Apocalypse is now streaming on <a href="https://player.bfi.org.uk/rentals/film/watch-african-apocalypse-2020-online">BFI Player</a>.

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Our writer sits down with director Rob Lemkin and co-writer Femi Nylander to discuss their new film African Apocalypse which takes viewers on an emotive historical journey

Confronting the Heart of Darkness in New Film African Apocalypse

Farewell Amor is the debut feature from filmmaker Ekwa Msangi. The film explores how physical separation and the passing of time impacts people and relationships, as well as the tragedy of displacement and how to maintain a sense of self when, in order to survive, the best option might be to fit in.
Farewell Amor, directed and written by Msangi, begins with a family reuniting in the arrivals hall of a New York airport. After 17 years of separation, Walter (Ntare Guma Mbaho Mwine) is able to bring his wife Esther (Zainab Jah) and daughter Sylvia (Jayme Lawson) to New York City where he has been residing. The family became displaced at the end of a war (possibly the Angolan civil war though it’s never referred to by name). As Walter obtains asylum in the US, his family remains in Africa and seeks refuge in Tanzania. It takes almost two decades for the family to be reunited.

I speak with Msangi over Zoom in early December, the tail-end of an unexpectedly difficult year for many. The global pandemic may have overshadowed all other tragedies, but it has not diminished other global issues. More and more people globally are finding themselves displaced. Anti-immigrant sentiment remains a deplorable constant in the west. Farewell Amor touches on an aspect of immigration that isn’t given space in popular media, namely family separation and the lengthy ordeal that often precedes a reunion. “The reasons that [many displaced people’s] home countries are so unliveable has to do with a lot of [western] foreign policies to begin with,” Msangi states. “I don&#8217;t believe that there is any person anywhere in the world who would just prefer to leave their home and their loves and their families and everything they know, to go somewhere that&#8217;s cold and does not want them.”
Msangi tells me that the film is partly inspired by her aunt and uncle who married in Tanzania in the mid-90s. Soon after their wedding, Msangi’s uncle received a student visa for the US and left Tanzania with every intention of bringing his wife and, at that point, their five-month-old right after him. To this day, Msangi’s aunt and uncle have been stuck in an endless cycle of visa applications, lasting over two decades now. “I was inspired by this, ‘what if’ story,” Msangi recalls. “What if the visas are no longer the issue? I just had this image of my uncle at the arrivals hall at the airport, waiting for my aunt and my cousin. What would he say? What would he be thinking? Would he recognise them? How do you receive the love of your life, after all these years? And what would have changed in your life, too — what would you have to be sweeping away in order to make space for this family to arrive?”

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While viewing this film, I found myself reflecting on my family and our histories. I haven&#8217;t experienced exactly the type of separation we see in this film, though I&#8217;ve witnessed something similar in my extended family. My immediate family and I left Africa together. I have aunts, uncles and cousins that made the journey alone to different parts of the world where they&#8217;ve established themselves and a new life. Some family members are still unable to visit the homes they left for reasons that frustrate even the most patient. Immigration is an illogical phenomenon. Many rules and criteria change on the whims of anti-immigrant governments, while individuals wait for so long for the security and relief of certainty.
The longer you’re away, the harder it can be to go back. Perhaps it is easier to want to stay with the memory of “home” and family as it was, and to be hesitant about reuniting with a changed country and changed people. In Farewell Amor, we observe Walter adopt the customs of his new country and struggle to empathise with his wife Esther, who represents what he left behind. After being uprooted from her home and separated from her husband, Esther finds solace and community in the church. Her beliefs provide her with the security and safety she needs but are shown in moments to be at odds with her new adopted home and transformed husband.

People adapt and assimilate, maybe for survival or out of preference for a life different to the one they left. It is almost unavoidable, especially when many western countries enforce assimilation through law or make living difficult if you do not fit in. Culture and individuality are praised when used for entertainment or aesthetic reasons. But in the areas of life that impact livelihood like education and work, personal expression is often limited or punished. As people, we are naturally drawn to the path of least resistance; we can’t judge anyone for doing what they feel they need to do to survive.
Walter has changed in subtle ways, particularly in how he speaks and the food he prepares. Farewell Amor explores the very complex question of what happens when you’re reunited with a person whose memories of you ceased to change from the moment you left? Phone and video calls are too sporadic and distant to provide a complete picture of growth. When you’re not present for those changes a person undergoes with time, you cannot adapt to them. So the people you are reunited with are as familiar as they are strange.

How are strong bonds like those between husband and wife, child and parent impacted by physical separation? Especially when separation divides parties in different social and political environments that impact people’s outlook on life. Personal relationships are hard enough without the added obstacle of separation. Leaving for a life elsewhere is not as simple as raising the money and buying a ticket. Immigration officials and rules will see to that. Msangi points out that many people have approached her to say they did not know this before seeing the film. The formal processes for starting a new life elsewhere, or bringing family once you’ve successfully managed to obtain asylum, is a matter of producing a lot of paperwork and paying a lot of money. After all this, nothing is guaranteed. For many displaced people this formality isn&#8217;t an option. The need for safety is urgent. Many take dangerous and life-threatening routes to secure a better life.
Being a young person experiencing a move like the one in Farewell Amor in this day and age is particularly interesting. Sylvia is a hopeful character for me because she seems almost the most equipped to handle this big change, thanks to technology. The internet exposes and allows us to connect with cultures so different from our own via a few clicks. At best, we find ourselves engaging with art (particularly music) and customs or cultures we may never have interacted with otherwise. But if we do, we have the knowledge and insight to be respectful and participate. “I felt very connected to Sylvia&#8217;s character in terms of being in a new environment and the culture shock; of being a young person and trying to have your own voice, but not really knowing what your voice is yet,” Msangi explains. “For me [like Sylvia], dance and music was definitely a saving grace. It was a place where I could be really confident and be myself and show myself.”

In Farewell Amor, Msangi tells an important story about an African immigrant family. Despite the heavier implications of the film, it is hopeful and warm. The thing about family bonds, no matter what, is that people mostly find a way to reconnect regardless of the obstacles that may be in the way. “For me, it&#8217;s a pleasure to tell authentic stories about my people,” Msangi says. “The whole reason I became a filmmaker was because I grew up in a time on the African continent where I never got to see images of me or the people around me or anything that was familiar. It was all imported stories about other folks. And that didn&#8217;t make any kind of sense to me, because I was surrounded by fun, exciting, interesting, creative people all day long.”
“We&#8217;re more than just trials and tribulations. The idea of telling stories about our people, not just on the continent, but everywhere in the diaspora, to me is super interesting and exciting.”
Farewell Amor (2020) is available to stream online through <a href="https://mubi.com/films/farewell-amor?gclid=CjwKCAiA25v_BRBNEiwAZb4-ZfdHblijbIbdgBlUeOxLfYvDJIBKGArUM3T_FhQrEAjX2tB6GPfejBoCD7YQAvD_BwE">Mubi</a> and is also available on <a href="https://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&amp;rct=j&amp;q=&amp;esrc=s&amp;source=web&amp;cd=&amp;ved=2ahUKEwjYlLi82u7tAhX1uXEKHQk2BCUQFjAAegQIAhAC&amp;url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.netflix.com%2Ftd-en%2Ftitle%2F81336593&amp;usg=AOvVaw2lJc7kuPOnaZm3n-JSCca7">Netflix</a> in Africa.
<pre>Photo Credit: IFC Films / Farewell Amor</pre>

farewell-amor

Our writer speaks to Ekwa Msangi about her debut feature Farewell Amor, which explores the pressure of immigration on families, including the loss of a sense of self and home.

Farewell Amor: Fitting In and Back Together Again

The release of the documentary film, Ultraviolence, is a timely one. The deaths of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor in early 2020 sparked worldwide protests and put a spotlight on the treatment of Black people at the hands of the police. Yet these killings and those that came before, in the US as well as the UK, are not new incidents. For the friends and families of the victims that have been murdered by the police it is a story that is familiar and sadly keeps on repeating.
Ken Fero speaks to me over a Zoom meeting, as is the custom in these coronavirus aware times: “I can see all the changes that are happening, I can see that obviously there are lots more schemes happening and mentoring schemes for Black people and equality in representation, decolonising the curriculum, all that stuff, that’s all good. It has to happen. But the issue around [deaths in] police custody, it’s almost like it’s been forgotten or ignored. That’s why the Black Lives Matter Movement started. So Ultraviolence is trying to remind people what this is all really about.”
Ultraviolence uses CCTV recordings and real footage to show us the cruel nature of the UK legal system that protects the police officers responsible for the deaths of the innocent. The film takes us through a number of murder cases and the legal processes surrounding them.
Christopher Alder, 37, an ex-paratrooper and computer skills student, was arrested on the night of the 1st of April 1998, for being aggressive toward hospital staff. Prior to this, on that same night, he received a severe blow to the head while at a nightclub, which is said to have caused his aggressiveness. After being arrested, he was hauled into the police station, handcuffed, and left on the floor, while police officers laughed and joked at the reception desk. Christopher died moments later on the floor of the station. This is all captured on CCTV.
Brian Douglas, 33, who on 2nd of May 1995, while driving through South London with his friend, was stopped and searched by police officers Mark Tuffey and Paul Harrison. During the incident both were assaulted by police officers using the then new long-handled baton. Brian’s friend, Stafford, received a broken wrist. Brian himself suffered a severe blow to the head giving him a fractured skull, injuries that led to his death in hospital shortly after.
The infamous case of Jean Charles da Silva e de Menezes, who, on 22nd of July 2005, was shot in the head at Stockwell Underground Station by police officers who mistook him for a terror suspect. His murder came at the height of increased tension due to the July 7th bombings (7/7) which had happened two weeks previously.

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Ultraviolence Janet Alder (L) sister of Christopher Alder with Ken Fero UV film director S

Other cases that this film touches upon include Paul Coker, who died in August 2005 in a cell at Plumstead Police Station after being restrained by 10 officers. At the time he was suffering from excited delirium/acute behavioural disorder. Rather than assessing him and deciding he needed medical attention, police arrested him instead for creating a disturbance. Roger Sylvester died on 11th of January 1999 in a psychiatric hospital after police officers handcuffed him and held him down for twenty minutes. As a result, he suffered a heart attack, lapsed into a coma and died a week later. The list of victims is not confined to one race either. On 22nd of September 1999, Harry Stanley, a white Scottish painter and decorator, was shot in the head by police marksmen after they were misinformed that Mr Stanley had a sawn-off shotgun.
What all these murders have in common is that, to this day, none of the police officers responsible have been charged, dismissed from duty or held accountable for these deaths.
This film doesn’t simply tell us what a tragedy these incidents are. It goes much further in order to expose a system that is devoid of justice for those families who have had a loved one murdered while in custody.
Director Ken Faro tells me: “It&#8217;s about saying the names of the police officers. And that&#8217;s a big difference between what we do in our films and what everybody else does in this country, because no other filmmaker will go as far as we have in terms of actually naming and showing [the] police officers [responsible]. What we&#8217;re interested in is what these officers have done, and how come they&#8217;ve got away with it.”
Ken adds that the media is not dealing with the roots of racism in the police force. “What we wanted to do with this film is to challenge.” In fact, he does just that and throws out a challenge. “I would challenge [the mainstream media] to show Ultraviolence. The time seems to be now. Nobody could have given them this kind of film at the most perfect moment. But they won’t go for it. For me, they are just as responsible.”

He goes further still to extend this responsibility. “I think the people have got responsibility as well. Everybody in this country has got responsibility to actually challenge the brutality that is being done in their name. One of the strongest slogans during the summer was ‘silence is violence’. That was just everywhere and that&#8217;s true. So what this film is trying to do is break the silence in any way possible.”
In Ultraviolence, we also see the struggle that siblings of the victims, Janet Alder and Brenda Weinberg, sisters of Christopher Alder and Brian Douglas respectively, are faced with as they talk to the CPS and IPCC. They demand to know why nothing has been done to convict their brothers’ murderers. Instead, they receive the message that the police are above the law.
“[We] got fed up with victim stories,” Ken states. “That’s all the media does. And we said no, that can&#8217;t happen. Because there&#8217;s always resistance. And that&#8217;s why we started <a href="https://vimeo.com/migrantmedia">Migrant Media</a> [his film company]. That&#8217;s why this film is about people that fight back.”
Ken believes there will always be resistance. The families who campaign for justice are heroes. But all too soon we forget them, we move on to the next issue, and the problem will be allowed to continue.
“Where we are now with deaths in police custody, the state I think will protect [police] officers at any cost,” Ken says. “I think we could be having 200 or 300 deaths in custody, and nothing would happen from the government’s point of view. And that&#8217;s what worries me. Where we are right now, especially with this <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/boris-johnson-intelligence-agents-crimes-undercover-b556205.html">Bill that Boris Johnson has just put through</a> [that will give new powers to public authorities, including the police and the Serious Fraud Office, to commit crimes while working undercover], which will allow anybody that works for the state to basically get away with murder.”
Director of human rights organisation Reprieve, Maya Foa, also <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/boris-johnson-intelligence-agents-crimes-undercover-b556205.html">comments on this Bill</a> stating: “Our intelligence agencies do a vital job in keeping the country safe, but there must be common sense limits to their agents’ activities, and we hope MPs will ensure these limits are written into the legislation.”
Sadly, it looks like we will be saying the names of even more victims in the not-so-distant future, but when we do, we should also say the names of the police officers that committed the crimes and repeat those names until the legal system finally holds them accountable.
Stay updated on upcoming Ultraviolence film screenings via the website at <a href="http://www.ultraviolencefilm.com/">www.ultraviolencefilm.com</a> or on Instagram <a href="https://www.instagram.com/migrantmedia/">@migrantmedia</a>.
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<pre>Photo Credit: Migrant Media</pre>

Ultraviolence by Ken Fero &#8211; Brenda Weinberg (R) sister of Brian Douglas

An interview with Ken Fero, director of a new documentary film that seeks to uncover the names behind deaths in UK police custody

An Interview with Ken Fero: Spotlight on UK Deaths in Police Custody in Ultraviolence

Director Francis Lee attempts to explore the rawness of human connection in this British costume drama based on the life of historical figure Mary Anning, in a film that ends up falling just a little bit short of winning our hearts. Ammonite’s enticing cast and bold narrative themes meant that the groundwork for a deep love story was definitely there, its execution just failed to seize the intimacy and emotion that resided in its potential.
A beach cast in ashy hues of grey and blue is the birthplace of discovery for fossil hunter Mary Anning (Kate Winslet). Set in the 1840s, she spends her days treading the rocks of Lyme Regis, with nothing but the wailing gales, tumbling waves and her mother, Molly (Gemma Jones), for company. She lives a solitary life pursuing palaeontology, but the sexism that plagues the industry expels Mary into the mundanity of selling seashell-encrusted trinkets to tourists.
When Roderick Murchison (James McArdle) arrives unannounced requesting to work alongside Mary and enrich his fossil hunting experience, she begrudgingly agrees knowing the disturbance this will bring to her gloomy yet contented life, imbued with routine and order. However, it is not the presence of Roderick that breaks the peace, it is his wife Charlotte (Saoirse Ronan).
Charlotte and Roderick’s relationship is void of intimacy. His controlling, abusive and oppressive manner sucks the life out of her. She is presented to us like an empty shell, much like the ones Mary collects and half-heartedly glues onto mirrors and jewellery boxes. Skin like paper and glassy-eyed, Charlotte is suffering from “a mild melancholia” according to Roderick, so he suggests that she stay with Mary in Lyme Regis as a form of therapy, the sea air her medicine and Mary her life support. The motif of fossils is used to represent Mary’s overdue unearthing of lesbian identity, buried by societal taboo and untold history.
Lee is no stranger to portraying queer love stories, with his debut God’s Own Country (2017) delving into male homosexuality with poignancy and sensitivity. This time, Ammonite’s two exceptional leads are what elevate the otherwise lacking story. Ronan plays Charlotte with a lovable grace; our hearts ache at her lows and soar at her highs. Winslet is unrecognisable as Mary, one which will likely be viewed as the best in her career. We can relate to her character even though her story is so detached from our realities, and understand her with very little dialogue.
It would be expected that two brilliant performances would make for an impactful chemistry. However, there is an air of unbelievability to the pair’s dynamic. Their romance is like a wave crashing to the shore, slow-building and over all too quickly. It felt like the narrative was rushed as the physical side of their relationship didn’t appear until halfway through the film; the build-up was certainly there but it can only go so far as a form of storytelling.
At times, the choreography of homoeroticism seems to feed into an unrealistic portrayal of female pleasure. If more time was devoted to the women growing to understand each other’s bodies and letting us linger in the intimacy, their chemistry would have felt more authentic.
Ammonite’s devotion to exploring the beauty of human connection makes erotic display all the more fundamental and it’s a shame it didn’t have the same impact as other scenes. Idyllic shots of iridescence as the pair frolic in the ocean depicts one of the rare instances where the colour palette warms and Mary’s face does too. Ammonite could have benefitted from more scenes like this, giving the sex scenes more of an emotional purpose, and moving away from voyeurism and closer to meaning.
The buzz around this film was partly due to it baring similarities to Céline Sciamma’s Portrait of a Lady on Fire released earlier this year. Although this conjured excitement, it may also have led to Ammonite’s downfall. Intimacy is something Sciamma depicts beautifully within a sensory experience, and although Lee tries to explore this using a similar technique, it doesn’t quite create the same immersion due to the importance he places on guesswork and tension. Yet both films effectively use a lack of dialogue to pay homage to a history of people forced to repress their sexuality and hide their stories. Living in silence, but still living nonetheless.
In this light, Mary Anning was a real palaeontologist and her sexuality remains ambiguous. There is no proof that she shared such a relationship with real-life geologist Charlotte Murchison but creative treatment is a wonderful thing. Using Mary’s story as a vessel for a homosexual romance between two interesting and intelligent women, set during a time when this would have been taboo, remains important for queer representation.
Ammonite is an example of a film’s on-screen talent upstaging the narrative. Without Winslet and Ronan dedicating themselves to the roles, the film would sadly be painfully average. Lee’s thought-provoking characters promise a crucial journey of discovery but its fixation on build-up and lack of affection stands in the way of us truly falling in love with the union. In the same way Mary digs through pebbles and mud to find something of significance, Ammonite needed to dig a little deeper.
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<pre>Photo Credit: Ammonite </pre>

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Kate Winslet and Saoirse Ronan put on a great performance in Ammonite, but their love story lacks intimacy.

Ammonite: A Stony Forbidden Love

We reported <a href="https://www.the-platform.org.uk/2020/10/06/the-platform-preview-to-the-bfi-london-film-festival-2020/">earlier this month</a> that the London Film Festival would be a more intimate affair than usual, much of it at home, with no gala performances and a smaller selection of films.
Of course, the festival did still have its headline acts. Ammonite, its closing finale, was a touching tale of love set in 1840s Lyme Regis (which we will review at greater length soon), with Kate Winslet and Saoirse Ronan as its leads. It was an effective if conventional choice, like the festival opener, Steve McQueen’s historical recreation Mangrove. Personally, I found McQueen’s other entry to the festival, Lovers Rock, more interesting, although a minor film and a kind of ‘B-side’ to Mangrove. McQueen’s genius is more for establishing a certain setting than in plot and it is put to especially good use in this almost non-narrative film of a Ladbroke Grove house party thrown at some point in the 1980s.
In the absence of an official competition the online audience picked the festival winner, awarding the prize to Thomas Vinterberg’s Another Round, about a group of schoolteachers who realise that their job is more fun if they drink every day. While there’s no arguing with taste I found this somewhat moralistic film a rather white, male and middle-aged choice compared to the diversity that the festival had put effort into displaying elsewhere.
The clear winner for me of the more crowd-pleasing films was the gorgeous, touching, One Night in Miami. Based on a stage play by first-time director Regina King, it imagines a meeting in a Miami hotel room between Cassius Clay, Malcolm X, Sam Cooke and Jim Brown, as they each contemplate a life changing decision: Clay to join the Muslim Brotherhood and Malcolm to leave it, Cooke to address social change in his music and Brown to depart the NFL to try a career in Hollywood. The decisions are as personal as they are political, and its central question – what does black success mean in a white society – is made to resound with a contemporary relevance despite the retro setting.
However, the festival is a chance to see films which won’t ever get the red carpet treatment. So here’s my list of six of the best to look out for beyond the big releases:

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one night in miami

<h5>UNDINE 
Dir. Christian Petzold (Germany/France)</h5>
Undine turns the conventional romance of a random city encounter into an absorbing and ultimately disquieting tale of love and pain. It will be familiar territory for viewers already acquainted with director Christian Petzold and lead actress Paula Beer, but it develops his concern with Europe’s historical scars in a more allegorical direction. Its lead character, Undine, is a guide to the architectural history of Berlin and is named after a water nymph of ancient legend. She becomes a figure who skirts the enigmatic realms of fantasy and disappointment, memory and myth.
<h5>NEVER GONNA SNOW AGAIN 
Dir. Małgorzata Szumowska, Michael Englert (Poland/Germany)</h5>
Another film that holds a delicate balance between social commentary and fantasy is this film about a Ukranian masseur who accrues a cult following in a wealthy Polish suburb. Born in Pripyat in the wake of the Chernobyl disaster, masseur Zhenia seems at first like he might have arrived as part of a moral lesson about migrant labour for the privileged members of the gated community, who simultaneously depend upon and look down on him. But as they fetishise the healing power of his tender strength, the near-wordless presence of this mysterious outsider comes to take on an altogether different, almost magical-realist quality, as the possibly sacred emissary of some cosmic power.
<h5>THE INTRUDER 
Dir. Natalia Meta (Argentina/Mexico)</h5>
This Argentine film takes its enigmas in a creepier direction. Starting out in comic vein as a woman realises that she doesn’t actually like the man she has gone on holiday with, his death soon after their arrival paradoxically makes him someone she can never truly be rid of. Meanwhile, she becomes the subject of the rather insistent attentions of an admirer she meets in the church where she sings, and, in a further inconvenience, her mother randomly decides to move in indefinitely. As a voiceover artist for horror films, this film is also part of a sub-genre of thrillers about a sound recordist, along with Blow Out, The Conversation and Berberian Sound Studio, that explore the eerily disembodied nature of the voice. The intruder of the title could thus be any one of a number of uncomfortably close beings, including her relationship to her own physical self.
<h5>A COMMON CRIME 
Dir. Francisco Márquez (Argentina)</h5>
This second Argentine thriller is another imaginative recreation of the slow falling apart of the boundaries, and the sanity, of its central female protagonist, but the dissolution here reveals a series of uncomfortable truths about social class. Cecilia is a university lecturer, happily able to quote Althusser and Gramsci on bourgeois ideology. But when her maid’s son knocks on her door, her refusal to help him has fateful consequences. While showing up her conformity to the ultimately brutal logic that it is her day job to critique, this is also the first film I have ever seen that manages to find dramatic material in a dissertation supervision session, and a superb combination of psychological and political insight.
<h5>AFTER LOVE 
Dir. Aleem Khan (UK)</h5>
The success of this deeply moving British drama owes in large part to the central performance of Joana Scanlan, who plays Mary Husain, a resident of Dover whose ferry-captain husband Husain dies unexpectedly in the opening sequence, only for her to find out that he had a secret life just over the border in Calais. The film follows her as she works her way into the household of his secret mistress and son. While such a plot would in less capable hands be barely credible, the quiet brilliance of Scanlan’s performance means that the themes of betrayal, race, death and mourning are played with intelligent subtlety and heart-breaking conviction.
<h5>LIMBO 
Dir. Ben Sharrock (UK)</h5>
It was a good year for British features, as shown by this comedy-drama about refugees seeking asylum in Scotland. What begins as a deadpan, rather absurdist culture-clash comedy turns to an intense portrait of the tragedies of dislocation. The humour’s absurdism is a nice way to show up both the awkwardness of cultural awareness and the bureaucratic cruelty of the exile situation. But it reaches real emotional depth in its second half as it probes the travails of Omar, a gifted young musician and Syrian refugee who must contend with the family he has left behind, the war he has fled and the music he may never play again.

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Limbo Film 2020

<pre>Featured: LIMBO by Ben Sharrock</pre>

After Love Film 2020 cropped

A Chernobyl-born cult leader, a hypocritical university lecturer, and a Syrian musician turned refugee are some of the memorable characters in our selection from this year’s London Film Festival.

Six of the Best from the BFI London Film Festival, 2020

ROCKS, created collaboratively by a mostly female cast and creative team, is a film that leaves a permanent impression. ROCKS’ impact is two-fold. Firstly, it is a story full of hope and joy that captures the essence of friendship. Secondly, it is a film made with immense generosity – a collaborative endeavour that everyone who took part in is proud of and sets a precedent for other filmmakers.
I was drawn to ROCKS from the moment I saw the poster. I saw myself and my city and that was enough to convince me that I had to see this film. The diversity of the young actors is remarkable only because it’s so rarely seen in film, not because it’s an unusual sight for any Londoner. I would be remiss not to mention what an important film ROCKS is for this very reason: ROCKS is, for many women like myself, the first time we’ll be seeing ourselves on the big screen.
Set in East London, the film follows teenager Rocks, a young girl with big dreams of starting her own make-up business and a great set of friends. Her world changes when one day she returns home from school to find that her mother is gone, leaving some money and a note saying she’s sorry.
Director Sarah Gavron and Producer Faye Ward discussed the idea of making a film with and about teenage girls, and recognised early on that such a film would need to be created in a collaborative way. The young cast, who had the experience of being teenage girls, and other creatives&#8217; voices, influenced the filmmaking process. I spoke with Anu Henriques, Associate Director of ROCKS, who formed was involved from the very early stages of the film.
“ROCKS is one story of hundreds of thousands of stories that we could have told that centres young Black and brown women from London,” Anu remarks. “Hopefully people walk away [from seeing the film] feeling encouraged to tell their own story and question why it has taken this long for us to have our stories told in this way.”
The creative team initially set out on an extensive development stage which involved research and work-shopping with young Londoners across girls’ comprehensives and youth hubs. It was in the midst of this process that writer Teresa Ikoko shared a story idea that resonated with the team and young cast. Ikoko describes the story as a love letter to her older sister and the Black women she was raised with. On sharing her idea with the creative team and the cast, Anu recalls, “[Teresa] shared it in such a generous way that meant that we were able to kind of bring our own love letters to the table as well.” And so, a project they could take towards production was born. Ikoko, along with writer Claire Wilson, set to work on the story arc of the film.
The entire creative team had the chance to share their opinions and ideas for different scenes. “In some of the workshops we ran we would stick up every single story beat on the walls,” Anu recounts. “I imagine this is one of the most nerve-wracking things as a writer, to kind of put your heart on a wall and then have people pick it apart and put it back together again. But [Ikoko and Wilson] were very generous in offering that up and creating a space where everyone felt like their voice was valued and their voice mattered and what they brought to the table was valued.”

This approach is radical for many reasons. The film industry is hierarchical and many openly sneer at the idea of any person with an assigned ‘role’ stepping out of their responsibilities and having input elsewhere. The ROCKS team instead insisted on the cast and creatives sharing their thoughts. The results are so clearly held with pride by everyone involved in the creation. As Anu says, “It was a brilliant challenge, trying to flatten the hierarchy in those creative storytelling spaces.”
“There’s a real issue in the industry of recognition of labour and recognition of expertise,” Anu continues. “What I hope is that the film, alongside all the other conversations around the narrative and themes, will also spark a conversation about how creatives and how storytellers are credited in those spaces. I hope that, in the future, we can find ways to be even more accurate in the crediting, whether that means being credited as a collective or something like that.”
The outstanding central cast of young women in the film mostly consists of first-time actors: some came out of the work-shopping stage and others from open auditions. The actors established friendships with one another prior to filming and as a result have incredible on-screen chemistry. “We had done such a long period of workshops with the young women that we were working with that, by the time we got onto set, there was such familiarity and such trust between the creative team and the cast. The young women improvised a lot of the dialogue on set, and they really guided some of the scenes as well,” Anu tells me.
The unconventional making and casting of the film required a thoughtful and deliberate approach to hiring the crew. The creative team were keen to ensure that the young actors would be able to imagine themselves behind the camera as well as in front. “So there were choices that were made to ensure that the crew and the HODs [Heads of Department] were reflective of the women in the film.”
Who owns a story? Who has the right to tell a certain story? These are questions that creep up often with regards to projects that elevate experiences from marginalised communities. Gavron and Ward recognised early on that the only way to authentically tell a story about young women from East London is to invite that group to the storytelling table. “So much more can be gained from collaborative spaces, I think, in storytelling, because the value of bringing different people to the table, the value of hearing different voices is always going to add to a story rather than take away from it,” Anu adds.

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ROCKS by Sarah Gavron_image 3_ reduced

Most films do not show the world as it is and there are so many stories that still need to be told. Watching ROCKS was the first time that I really felt viscerally what representation can mean to a person, old or young – what it actually feels like to behold a character who looks like you or has lived a life like you. It is an inspiring and validating feeling.
Towards the end of our chat, I quickly ask Anu her thoughts on the recent announcement made by the Academy that filmmakers will have to meet a detailed inclusion and diversity guideline, starting 2024, in order for their work to be eligible for a Best Picture prize. “I’m a full believer that diversity is possibly the easiest thing you could do – the laziest thing you can do in some ways,” Anu comments. “If we’re talking about infrastructural change, diversity is the tip of the iceberg. It’s not the bulk of the problem by any means. If we’re really talking about how you change storytelling, how you change who’s represented in storytelling, how you change who is awarded for storytelling, right, you need to really unpack the whole infrastructure and not just need to have a certain number of Black and brown voices behind or in front of the camera.”
At the heart of ROCKS is a universal theme that will resonate with everyone: the power of friendship and hope. It is difficult not to root for these young people from the get-go. The unabashed displays of youth, the confidence, the happiness. ROCKS is a feat and a reminder that we’ll all be alright because the kids are alright. And the collaborative process behind its making sets a precedent for future filmmaking.
ROCKS is showing in select cinemas nationwide from 18 September 2020. Book your tickets <a href="https://rocks.film/">here</a>.
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<pre>Photo Credit: ROCKS by Sarah Gavron</pre>

ROCKS by Sarah Gavron_image 2

A radical approach to filmmaking by women creatives has produced an authentic and moving British film in which some Londoners will see themselves represented for the first time.

The Making of ROCKS: Radical, Collaborative Filmmaking

“Every decent director has only one subject, and finally only makes the same film over and over again. My subject is the exploitability of feelings, whoever might be the one exploiting them. It never ends. It’s a permanent theme. Whether the state exploits patriotism, or whether in a couple relationship, one partner destroys the other.”
So said Rainer Werner Fassbinder, the notorious and influential film director whose films brutally explored the moral ambiguities of post-war German society. Fassbinder&#8217;s brief but prolific 15-year spell of cinematic output still resonates today, and his mastery over the exploitability of feelings is an achievement not lost on Fyzal Boulifa, the British director of Lynn + Lucy, which is <a href="https://player.bfi.org.uk/subscription/film/watch-lynn-lucy-2019-online">now streaming on BFI Player</a>. In a recent Q&amp;A with the BFI, Boulifa answered questions in his home whilst perched in front of a poster of Fassbinder&#8217;s masterpiece, Ali: Fear Eats The Soul, and remarked that much like the cinema of the German auteur, his work is concerned with issues of &#8220;representation&#8221;. Fassbinder frequently challenged traditional forms of representation, playfully oscillating between brutal melodrama and comic irony to portray stories about people oppressed or exploited because of their race, class, sex and sexual orientation. As a contemporary director tackling questions of representation, Boulifa understands how cinema has the ability to challenge stereotypes and more honestly study both the beauty and ugliness of its characters. In turn, this forges a liminal space for the audience to ask questions of their own morality: how much of yourself do you see in these characters, and whose side are you on? It is this unflinching approach to representation that makes Lynn + Lucy one of the most fascinating British films of the year – a tragic and horrific tale of emotional exploitation – set against the backdrop of working-class life in Britain.
Set in Harlow, an Essex town located just outside Greater London&#8217;s tube line commuter boroughs, Lynn (brilliantly played by Roxanne Scrimshaw who was street cast via a local newspaper) and her best friend Lucy have been inseparable since school. However, Lynn&#8217;s disconnection from anything outside of motherhood or her close friendship with Lucy is made clear early on: upon starting her first job since school at a local hairdressing salon, she feels bullied by her colleagues and left out of the conversation. After Lucy is implicated in the cause of a tragic death, Lynn publicly condemns her best friend and begins to accrue social status as an arbiter of community safety, forming a kind of &#8216;neighbourhood watch&#8217; network that seeks to protect the group’s children and vilify Lucy in the process. Much like Fassbinder, Boulifa doesn&#8217;t shy away from on-screen discomfort, leaving the flaws, virtues and malicious intentions of all the characters clearly on display. Each shot is directed with precision, focusing on the lingering stares and covert whispers that emerge in the aftermath of the tragedy. As empathy and kindness begin to run in short supply, Boulifa creates a sense of relentless claustrophobia, using the proximity of the pair’s living situation to emphasise their widening emotional distance. Lynn holds a meeting in a local community centre to call for collective action against Lucy, and it&#8217;s easy to see the genesis of the group&#8217;s hatred – swap the physical space in front of the camera for daytime television call-in shows, online forums or the comment section of any online newspaper, and the story is much the same.
In recent years, working-class characters in British film and television have often been doomed to caricature or parody, or simply used as a proxy for whatever structural inequalities that the storyteller wants to highlight. In Lynn + Lucy, the &#8216;working-class-ness&#8217; of the film&#8217;s protagonists is accompanied by a more subtle approach, with the director taking care to keep the film&#8217;s colour palette bright and avoid ceding to lazy class stereotypes. What is clear though is that the characters of Lynn and Lucy live their lives in a society that has already set them up to fail, and the spectre of a deep-rooted viciousness lurks around every corner. Along the way we bump into a salon colleague who derides Lynn as &#8220;white trash&#8221; behind her back and an aspirational middle-class curtain-twitcher living down the road who remarks that &#8220;there are some people who should never reproduce&#8221;. This particular line is intended to shock, but it is hardly surprising for anyone who has grown up in the country where prime time television entertainment includes the class-baiting Can&#8217;t Pay We&#8217;ll Take It Away, Supernanny and Little Britain (a situation recently detailed in an excellent article by Jason Okundaye for <a href="https://tribunemag.co.uk/2020/06/the-blair-show">The Tribune</a>).
Lynn + Lucy, in its brief 90-minutes of running time, succeeds in part because it does not make any obvious points about the background of the characters. At heart, it is a tragedy, primarily concerned with the elicitation of emotion rather than a straightforward, realist comment on the structural conditions the characters find themselves in. It is rare to see cinema directors make forays into the everyday stories of working people living in Britain today with the kind of fearlessness and playfulness that Fyzal Boulifa strives for his debut feature. Lynn + Lucy is a timely reminder that British cinema has a duty to better portray the complexity and diversity of narrative voices from low and lower-middle incomes – voices that neoliberalism and austerity have largely crowded out. We need representation to become one of the watchwords of the British filmmaking lexicon allowing for a more honest set of stories about, and from, people who grew up or who live in working-class Britain today. We need representations of happiness, sadness, grief, elation, success and failure; we need romance, drama, horror, comedy and everything in between. Perhaps then we can start reversing the damage of a media-complicit, decades-long misrepresentation of working-class life in Britain.
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<pre>Photo Credit: BFI / Lynn+Lucy</pre>

lynn+lucy-2019-003-head-on-shoulder-jackets

An unflinching look at working-class Britain makes for one of the most fascinating films of the year.

The Ugly Beauty of Our Selves: A Review of Lynn + Lucy

* Contains mild spoilers
BBC’s one-off drama <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episodes/p08g29ff/sitting-in-limbo">Sitting in Limbo</a>, directed by Stella Corradi, is a lesson in black British identity – and what it’s like to have that identity systematically stripped of you piece by piece by a government that is meant to establish justice and promote the general welfare of its citizens.
It follows the real-life story of Anthony Bryon (Patrick Robinson), a second generation West Indian who settled in the UK as a child more than 50 years ago and became one of the many victims of the Windrush Scandal. It is also about a familiar juxtaposition when it comes to race, namely, how we see ourselves positively as opposed to how we are viewed by others negatively. Indeed, how can we fight to protect our humanity when a more powerful external force, like the British state itself, seeks to remove us from our homes and take away our ability to provide for our families, receive care and treatment, and contribute to society? How do we remain British when it feels like Britain is rejecting us?
The government have thrown the lives of many people from the Windrush generation into turmoil by creating a “hostile environment” for people they categorised as illegal immigrants to the UK. In its focus on achieving a quota of reporting and detaining illegal immigrants, the government have also caused legal migrants and existing UK citizens to become victim to the hostile environment. As the then Home Secretary, <a href="https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/874022/6.5577_HO_Windrush_Lessons_Learned_Review_WEB_v2.pdf">Amber Rudd, stated</a>, while she stood down for the treatment that her own department had subjected the Windrush citizens to during this scandal: “[I’m] concerned that the Home Office has become too concerned with policy and strategy and sometimes loses sight of the individual.”
In Sitting in Limbo, Anthony is fired from his job after his employers receive a letter from the Home Office stating that he is not eligible to work in the UK. From that moment on, Anthony is forced to deal with government agencies questioning his identity at every turn. He has to keep proving who is. He is repeatedly asked by the Home Office to find evidence that “supports his claim that he’s lived here since 1965”. What they fail to tell him is that they have lost documents that prove he has right to remain in the UK. Furthermore, the Home Office has demanded entirely <a href="https://www.jcwi.org.uk/windrush-scandal-explained">unrealistic paperwork</a> from British nationals (one official document from every year that the person has lived in the UK), making it impossible for them to achieve. Naturally, Anthony’s efforts in proving his identity fail and he is almost one of the <a href="https://metro.co.uk/2020/06/08/sitting-limbo-who-anthony-bryan-what-windrush-scandal-12820348/">83 people who were wrongly deported</a> for being an illegal immigrant, at least 13 of whom died before the mistake was acknowledged. If it wasn’t for legal and media intervention, he would have been deported to a country that he didn’t know and had not been his home since the age of eight, like many others. This is made worse by paternity tests to prove that he is the father to his children, Gary and Eileen, playing right into the racist trope of a black man being a criminal and a serial adulterer. When these tropes are used to threaten your right to be in a country, they take on an even more sinister shape.

sitting-in-limbo

Sitting In Limbo

Immigration has historically been a political football used to strike fear in the hearts of the UK electorate. Rhetoric suggesting loss of jobs, strain on public services and racial mixing have all been used to <a href="https://www.versobooks.com/books/3064-hostile-environment">incite fear, hate and often violence</a> towards migrants. Such rhetoric was expressed when British subjects from Commonwealth countries arrived in the UK like the Empire Windrush generation, just as they have been used in Brexit and other debates more recently.
As stated in an <a href="https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/874022/6.5577_HO_Windrush_Lessons_Learned_Review_WEB_v2.pdf">independent review</a> to the House of Commons (March 2020): “The causes of the Windrush Scandal can be traced back through successive rounds of policy and legislation about immigration and nationality from the 1960s onwards, the aim of which was to restrict the eligibility of certain groups to live in the UK.”
Theresa May who came up with the “hostile environment” immigration bill while Home Secretary <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2013/oct/10/immigration-bill-theresa-may-hostile-environment">said in 2013</a>: “What we don&#8217;t want is a situation where people think that they can come here and overstay because they&#8217;re able to access everything they need.” She continued in this vein stating in <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/theresa-may-immigration-policies-speech-conference-2015-tory-conservative-party-views-a7209931.html">her 2015 speech</a> at the Conservative Party conference that immigration was of no benefit to the UK. She said: “While there are benefits of selective and controlled immigration, at best the net economic and fiscal effect of high immigration is close to zero.” She added that “mass immigration” was the reason for the housing crisis, high unemployment and the lack of investment in schools, creating a perception that has been contested by many. Inevitably, we later found that May’s policies affected the lives of British citizens, their families and <a href="https://www.publicfinance.co.uk/opinion/2018/12/assessing-theresa-mays-immigration-legacy">public sector workers</a>, who were forced to become whistleblowers.
This hostile environment policy effectively turned employers, landlords, hospital workers, bank staff, social services staff and others into immigration officers by getting them to check immigration statuses. However, the most damaging act of Theresa May’s Home Office was to wrongly categorise hundreds of British subjects from Commonwealth countries, and <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/dec/18/three-generations-of-windrush-family-struggling-to-prove-they-are-british">in many cases</a> their UK-born children, as illegal immigrants who had to prove that they were eligible to remain in the country that they called their home for most, if not all, of their lives.
What Sitting in Limbo successfully conveys is the failure of the government to treat people with dignity. Anthony, like many others, was wrongly targeted and repeatedly detained as an illegal immigrant. Anthony and his wife were treated like criminals. The trauma and lack of trust took its toll on him. Every government official he met failed to give him any explanation or offer any support.
As the <a href="https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/874022/6.5577_HO_Windrush_Lessons_Learned_Review_WEB_v2.pdf">independent review</a> to the House of Commons recommends, the Home Office needs to improve in a number of areas to stop this from happening again. It states: “it must change its culture to recognise that migration and wider Home Office policy is about people and, whatever its objective, should be rooted in humanity.”
The scandal is far from over, as it was recently revealed that only a small fraction of those affected by the Windrush scandal have <a href="https://www.voice-online.co.uk/windrush/news-windrush/2020/05/28/windrush-scandal-just-60-people-have-received-compensation/">received compensation</a>. As of May 2020, only 60 of the 1,275 people who have made claims, have received payment, which has been slammed by opposition MPs. Former Shadow Home Secretary <a href="https://twitter.com/HackneyAbbott/status/1266051697601896448">Diane Abbot said in a tweet</a>: “Government ministers shed crocodile tears about #Windrush scandal. But the pathetically small number of people who have got any compensation, tells you how much they really cared.” The backlog of outstanding cases with Home Secretary Priti Patel and the Windrush taskforce are in the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/apr/30/windrush-case-backlog-remains-at-3700-home-office-reveals">thousands</a>.
Watch BBC&#8217;s Sitting in Limbo <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p08g29ff/sitting-in-limbo">here</a>.
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<pre>Photo Credit: BBC / Ludovic Robert</pre>

Sitting in Limbo BBC Windrush Large Option

On Windrush Day, Stella Corradi’s television drama is a good opportunity for audiences to understand the failures of British government immigration policy.