Wilford Rafael Baptiste came from an island to an island and built an island. In his tiny pocket-handkerchief back yard he has become a true master of gardening inventions and has rebuilt his own miniature paradise.
Anita's got attitude and ambition. She plans to be a DJ, dancehall diva, dropping sweet lyrics to wind up the dancefloor. She has a style to make bodies wind... for she is Princess Neeta... 'Mistress of the Mic'... if it wasn't for.... her two kids, if it wasn't for Byron, the kid's father - a singerman himself, who ain't around that much but thinks his babymother should be at home looking after his children. If it wasn't that her mother loves the church so much and disapproves of the dancehall.
Babymother is Anita's story. At first a woman-child, selfish yet naive, street-smart yet vulnerable. A girl as yet unable to face the responsibilities of her children or her life. A girl travelling along the bumpy road to adulthood, through the tough, deeply male world of reggae music. Set against a backdrop of Harlesden's tenement housing, Babymother is a journey into the explosion of colour, passion and style that is the dancehall!
Colour Blind charts the family passions and problems which come to the surface after Bridget McQueen arrives home with a black husband and the growing years of the couple's mixed race daughter, Rose Angela, during the period after the First World War in South Shields. The story, initially told in flashback, then follows the experiences of the adult Rose Angela as she fights to establish her own place in the world.
As pure style, dreadlocks cross social boundaries of race, politics, sex and even economics. But for some their dreads are a statement of being, a way of life - and their only connection with their African origins and identity. Is white appropriation of dreadlocks the theft of black culture or a sign that the African spirit will lead us into the next millennium? The future's dread, the future's bright, the future's black.
In the small hours of the night two shots ring out. Kudjo, a black gangster, lies alone and bleeding on the floor of his deserted nightclub. Through his eyes, we see the climactic events which led up to his shooting. Set in London's clubs, the film tells of a man's battle to escape the hate that he himself set in motion many years before.
On The Edge is a turbulent love story between two tormented characters who desperately try to come to terms with the flaw in their nature. Lorna is a lost and distraught teenage heroin addict, who prostitutes herself to feed her habit. Court is a young man in his early twenties, haunted by the betrayal of his sister, who was sacrificed by his mother to regain her daughter's lost soul.
The Manhattan Brothers wrote and sang 'Township Jazz' music during 1940s and 50s in South Africa. With over 150 hits, they sold millions of records, but their record company, Gallo Records, paid them using petty cash vouchers and hardly anything in royalties. Exiled from South Africa for almost thirty years, Joe Mogotsi now returns to find out if, in the 'new' South Africa, past injustices will be redressed.
By the side of a road somewhere in the North of England, Sammy stands and waits for the arrival of childhood friends Billy and Ruby. It is twenty years since they all first met, when Sammy was taken by social workers to join an isolated children's home on the dramatic Northumbrian coast. As Sammy gets into Billy and Ruby's car it is immediately clear that, despite the fact that Ruby is recently pregnant, there is violent tension between them and that there is a psychological significance to the mysterious journey that Billy is taking them on.
As the journey progresses, we travel back to the past of their childhood when Sammy, shy and vulnerable and unable to read, joins the home. Billy, confident and charismatic, befriends and guides him through the trials of life in the home and protects him from the violent attentions of the resident bully, Bernie. As Sammy grows in confidence, Billy encourages a romantic attachment with his old girlfriend, the flame-haired Ruby. Using his emotional power over his friends, Billy establishes a ménage a trois that sets them apart from other children in the home. This power is threatened when, in a dramatic incident, Billy tries to defend Sammy from Bernie and gets savagely beaten. The resulting act of revenge is one which will inextricably bind the three friends through the intervening years until the pressure of the past and present combine to force an inevitable resolution.
Leicester, 1972. T-Rex are chewing up the charts and Jack, a mixed race teenager with a lot more than schoolwork on her mind, has a hectic month of growing up to do. This is coming-of-age, Midlands-style: forget the Prom, corridor passes and making out at the drive-in. Think Baked Alaska, the Colgate ring of confidence and sneaky cigarettes behind the bike sheds.
When we first meet Jack it's the day of her first period and just four weeks before she has to run the race of her life for a place on the county athletics squad. Convinced she is champion material, her bullish PE teacher, Mr Loughborough, is piling on the pressure to train hard, and buys her a long-coveted pair of swanky red trainers to demonstrate his commitment.
But a 13-year-old's life is not just one long 200 metres: Jack shines in academia and art class as well as on the track, and she's got her eye on a rather handsome classmate called Steven Green. Sex, 'frigging' and the big 'V' are the subject of every school bus seminar and playground pow wow. And Jack's mum Vivian is determined to keep a beady eye on her daughter's new-found interest in matters carnal. Vivian is also convinced her daughter is about to be offered a cocktail of class A drugs on every street corner.
While on a school cross-country run up to the local tourist trap and nookie spot, Jack is approached by Spanner, a David Cassidy look-alike with a nice line in cannabis consumption and floppy hair. He introduces Jack to the delights of getting slowly wasted in the sun. Meanwhile Jack's best friend Maxine sets her pal up in a garage tryst to do the deed with Steven Green and his spotty mate Poor Bastard. But the three of them are disturbed by a local policeman. By now determined to throw off her cumbersome virginity, Jack steals a handful of contraceptive pills from her mum's bedside cabinet and finally gets together with Spanner...
Nimi leads a relatively peaceful life amongst the female dominated Nigerian community in a picturesque coastal town in southern France. Life consists of working as a landscape gardener, looking after her eight year old son Sammy and attending exuberant masses at the local African church. Nimi's unmarried status (and son) are frowned upon by her traditionalist neighbours and her mother Nene is very keen to marry her off to confer her with respectability. When the handsome Reverend Fola moves into town and shows interest in Nimi, it is like a godsend for Nene who desperately attempts to get the two together.
Nimi's son Sammy, however, has other ideas. He has confused writer Matthew, the creator of his beloved comic action hero Saracen, with his heroic creation and deems him a much more suitable match than the Reverend Fola for his mother. He tries at length to persuade Matthew to marry his mother instead, using every means at his disposal to unite them.
Against their expectations, love blossoms. Although Nimi has resigned herself to marriage to the rather unexciting Reverend Fola, she is intrigued by Matthew. However, she is also very aware of Matthew's married status, distrust of women and general unwillingness to commit to a relationship. In contrast, Matthew is drawn to Nimi not just for her beauty, but the stability of her African way of life and an innate goodness which throws him completely off-guard.
Yoman's Dance, a contemporary London story, investigates how a young Senegalese man with a lack of English, copes in the cosmopolitan metropolis. The central theme of the story is Yoman's battle to overcome his inability to express and articulate. Not naive to the difficulties of moving to a new and foreign city, and armed with a complex history and optimistic attitude, Yoman is well able to meet the many challenges that face him. However, the constant wear of misunderstanding climaxes with the failure of his first short lived encounter, which leads to a final sense of isolation.
In their seminal, intersectional first feature, directors Maureen Blackwood and Isaac Julien incisively interrogate Black British experience, fusing dramatic scenes of family life with documentary and mystical elements, to give richly imaginative witness to a ‘post-colonial’ identity that encompasses generational, class, sexual and gender differences. Vividly manipulated footage of urban unrest, police brutality, gay rights marches and the miners’ strike, alongside chopped-up sequences showing a buzzing London night life, are intertwined, creating a penetrating example of Sankofa’s disruptive critique of 1980s Britain. And it looks fantastic. The film screens in a simultaneous transatlantic premiere with the New York Film Festival.
(London Film Festival)
