Tag: Black

Misbehaviour

Posted on by Jeremy Clarke

One of the great achievements of the British historical drama Misbehaviour is that it recreates a single event on which two separate stories hang. The 1970 Miss World competition coincided with the rise of not only the nascent women’s liberation movement but also increasing international unease with South Africa’s Apartheid regime. The pitfall awaiting anyone writing a script about all this (or directing one) is that it means constantly walking a tightrope, getting the balance right so that justice is done to both intertwining narratives. It is to Misbehaviour’s great credit that it manages to pull off this difficult feat.

On the one hand, Women’s Lib activists would disrupt the ceremony with flour bombs after claiming it was nothing more, nothing less than a cattle market. On the other, there were two entrants from South Africa, one white, one black. Although the London-based Miss World was a popular annual event begun in 1951 which by 1970 had become a regular fixture in the television calendar, it was open to charges of both objectifying women and tending to favour white winners (notwithstanding the fact that Miss World 1966 was an Indian, a fact omitted here).

The two narratives are very much an insider’s and an outsider’s view of the contest. The insiders are the organisers Eric and Julia Morley (Rhys Ifans and Keeley Hawes), their special guest star Bob Hope (Greg Kinnear) and his savvy wife Dolores (Lesley Manville), and last but most definitely not least the contestants, most notably favourite-to-win Miss Sweden (Clara Rosager) and two black contestants Miss Africa South (Loreece Harrison) and Miss Grenada (Gugu M’batha-Raw). The outsiders are the Women’s Libbers, an Islington collective headed by force of nature Jo Robinson (Jessie Buckley) joined by University College London history student Sally Alexander (Keira Knightly) who gets volunteered into becoming the group’s press spokesperson for TV talk shows.

The presence of two Miss South Africas represents a shrewd strategy by Eric to avoid an anti-Apartheid boycott of the contest. He and his wife are putting on a show / running a business and trying to make everything go like clockwork. The white Miss Sweden can be seen chafing against the establishment nature of the event while the two black girls are glad to be there but convinced neither of them has a chance of winning. Dolores Hope, meanwhile, is well aware her husband has an eye for the ladies and Manville’s astutely observed performance makes it very clear that she not he wears the trousers in their relationship.

The pleasures on offer here are many. The script is clever, the casting smart, the production design spot on. Articulate and intelligent student Sally is seen sidelined by male tutors and students purely on the basis of gender, told for example that to write a thesis on female workers is ‘niche’. All this fuels her as the token protester on panel discussions at the oh so establishment BBC. She is also the one who gets Jo and her fellow protesters to dress down so that when they turn up with tickets they won’t get refused entry to the contest. Kinnear exudes just the right of smarmy charm as celebrity Hope. Ifans generates a seedy respectability as instigator and organiser while Hawes as his wife comes across as a shrewd businesswoman who won’t stand for any nonsense and sticks up for the contestants.

From early close ups shots of 1970 ladies’ boots, shoes and dresses through creches with men looking after the kids for their female activist partners to the interior of the Princess Theatre where the contest takes place (presumably the real life location the Albert Hall wouldn’t give permission for filming), you feel like you’re back in the London of 1970. (I speak as one who was a pre-teen in London at the time: watching it felt like I was really back there again.)

Director Lowthorpe brilliantly pulls it all together in a film which understands the issues as they were then and as they are now. It may be hard for today’s twentysomething feminists to understand what the world was like at that time, but this film will give you a pretty accurate idea of not only the fashions and the complicity, but also the rebel mindset that started to take it all apart. As a title at the end mentions, the Patriarchy still needs taking down one event at a time. Wherever your head is at, watching Misbehaviour is a good place to start.

Misbehaviour is out in the UK on Friday, March 13th. On VoD from Wednesday, April 15th. Watch the film trailer below:

Waves

Posted on by victorfraga

Tyler (Kevin Harrison Jr.) is going to be the best at wrestling. His father Ronald (Sterling K. Brown) says so. He orders it, mercilessly training him every day in their own improvised gym at the top of their splendid middle-class house. Ronald is a successful businessman. He worked hard to get there. He tells his son that there is no option for an African-American to be “average” at anything. He must excel. Such is to be black in America.

Tyler has other problems. His girlfriend Alexis (Alexa Demie) is pregnant. They go to an abortion clinic in order to get the pregnancy terminated and encounter some very vocal anti-abortion protestors. One used the n-word on Tyler. Tyler is desperate to get the pregnancy ended. Alexis decides to keep the baby. In a frantic couple of hours, Tyler smashes up his room, rushes out of the parental home, goes to a party where Alexis is and in a fatal argument causes her to fall on the kitchen floor where she dies. He ends up the local “reform” facility with a life sentence. There is the possibility of parole after 30 years. The judge describes this a provision for “mercy”. The state of Florida has indeed a very odd notion of “mercy”.

The film then switches to the predicament of Tyler’s sister Emily (Taylor Russell). Isolated at High School and harassed on social media because of what her brother has done, she is befriended by a kind boy called Luke (Lucas Hedges and becomes his girlfriend. Luke has problems of his own. His father is dying of cancer in a hospital in Missouri and Luke cannot forgive him for what he put his mother and Luke through when Luke was young. Emily persuades him to visit his father and the father eventually dies amid forgiveness and reconciliation.

This film is about forgiveness. It is about how decent and well-meaning people screw up their lives because they lose their temper too much, because they are trying too hard, because they need to hang on to those they love. As such, it is winning and moving. The camera work is inventive. The music is compelling, particularly Dinah Washington’s What a Difference a Day Makes. Some, however, may feel the camerawork too dramatic, the emotional underscoring too obvious. Even the most innovative of Hollywood films can’t stop telling you what you ought to be feeling at any given moment. A good weekend weepy!

Waves is in cinemas on Friday, January 17th. On VoD in June.

The top picks to succeed Daniel Craig as the next James Bond

Posted on by victorfraga

British actor Daniel Craig [pictured above] will wear the famous tuxedo one final time in No Time To Die (Cary Joji Fukunaga) next year before making way for the next in line. So it’s now time to find his successor!

Unsurprisingly, British actors dominate the field to be cast as the next 007. London-born James Norton is most people’s favourite to take the role, though Scotsman Richard Madden is also heavily fancied. Irish-German Michael Fassbender and British-Malaysian Henry Golding are also believed to be interested, while Irishmen Cillian Murphy and Aidan Turner are thought to be in contention.

Stars like Gillian Anderson [pictured above] have been linked with being cast as the first-ever female Bond, and insiders suggest there’ll be a prominent female role in the new story. Other potential female candidates include Emily Blunt, Angelina Jolie, Charlize Theron, Emilia Clarke, Jodie Comer, Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Vicky McClure and Helen Mirren.

Recent YouGov data suggests that 51% of Bond’s British compatriots are ready to accept a female James Bond, and that appears to be a less controversial option than Bond being portrayed as from somewhere other than the UK; just 35% say they’d accept a non-British persona for 007.

The data also reveals that 29% of Brits would find it unacceptable for Bond to be black, while a further 13% admit to being unsure. Meanwhile, a gay Bond would be unacceptable to 40% of the UK population, and a further 13% are unsure, leaving just 47% who say they’d accept it. So, perhaps it’ll be some time before the franchise breaks with tradition when casting for their lead role.

Of course, looking good in a tuxedo is a must-have for the part, alongside knowing your way around a baccarat table. Luckily for the candidates, sites such as BonusFinder provide a full list of real money casinos for our would-be Bonds to explore while researching the role, including a healthy dose of bonuses to help you improve at your preferred casino games.

Here are our top five picks to be cast as the next James Bond:

  1. James Norton – The 34-year-old is best known for his work in British TV, where he has starred in dramas including Happy Valley and McMafia. He also played the title role in 2019’s Mr Jones and will feature in horror-thriller Things Heard and Seen next year.
  2. Richard Madden – Madden earned critical acclaim for his performance in the British TV thriller Bodyguard, collecting a Golden Globe for Best Actor. He recently played a lead role in war epic 1917 and is presently filming for Marvel’s upcoming picture, The Eternals.
  3. Tom Hiddleston – Perhaps best known to American audiences for his recent appearances in Avengers pictures Infinity War and Endgame, Hiddleston is a relative veteran of the big screen. He has also recently captured attention as Loki in the Thor franchise.
  4. Michael Fassbender – Born in Germany, Fassbender is remembered for his portrayal of Magneto in the X-Men series, after having appeared in 300 at the start of his bigscreen run. He received critical acclaim for his part as Edwin Epps in 12 Years a Slave.
  5. Idris Elba – The veteran of our shortlist [pictured above], Elba’s major picture debut came before the turn of the century and enjoyed critical breakthrough in 2010 for his role as Luther in the TV series of the same name.

We’re still in the dark for now, and we’re likely to remain so until after the release of Bond 25 in April 2020. While we wait, we can turn our excitement towards that new film and enjoy Craig’s last outing as 007.

Monsters and Men

Posted on by victorfraga

Darius Larson (Samel Edwards), a very friendly Afro-American dealer of illegal cigarettes, stands outside a small shop in the Bed-Stuy area of Brooklyn and meets all the local dudes. One of them is Manny (Anthony Ramos) who gets a bit of cash off him and then goes home to his wife and little daughter. Later, while out walking in the street in the evening, Manny comes across Darius, who police are trying to arrest outside the shop. Manny whips out his mobile and starts filming. Manny is not particularly interested in filming anything significant, but suddenly Darius is shot dead and Manny realises that he has recorded the full details of Darius’s death.

The recorded footage on the mobile is the central theme of the film as it reveals that Darius was shot dead without justification. All three characters who look at it closely realise that they should act on what they see. Manny acts and is viciously compromised by the cops. Dennis Williams, (acted with great nuance by John David Washington), an honest Afro-American cop who works in the same precinct as the bad cops reports it but is thwarted by the response to his report.

Zyrick Jr., a promising young African-American baseball star realise that he must act up after the cops plant incriminating material. This is to his father’s overwhelming disappointment. He is desperate for his son to succeed at baseball and, as a cop himself, does not want to rock any boats.

The film quietly but insistently emphasises how trapped people are in the machinations of power. The response to Dennis’s report is typical of the methods of power. He is interviewed with great courtesy and correctness by an investigator (an Afro-American woman) and invited to say what he knows about the bad cops (about who complaints on other matters have been made). He cannot, however, really do so as he has not worked closely with them. As the investigator leaves, she looks at him as if he is a tremendous waster of time. Dennis is not a waster of time.

The main fact is that Darius was shot dead without any justification. The establishment always makes a show of investigating criminal matters in the periphery, while carefully avoiding the root causes of the problem. Even if police forces have “rotten apples” in their midst, which their superiors deplore, not too much bad publicity is allowed to get out. This is not just an American phenomenon. It featured at the Hillsborough football stadium investigation, the shootings in Derry on Bloody Sunday and the Guildford Four.

The situation of Zyrick’s father is particularly sad. He is a loyal cop and like many Afro-American is desperate for his son to escape the obscurity of his birth by succeeding at sport. He accepts, however, that “these things happen” and it is better to leave matters as they are.

This emphasises the slogan “Black Lives Matter”. The fact is that in American society Afrp-Americans count for less, as did Irish peasants in the United Kingdom in the 19th century, East Enders in London, the tenants of Grenfell Tower, the inhabitants of favelas in Brazil, poor African peasants in the hand of ruthless dictators and so the list can go on. The film quietly and insistently demonstrates how good people are caught up in the processes of power and find it hard to escape. This is done without an undue amount of Hollywood special effects or plangent script-writing although touching scenes of children playing with the protagonists (for instance, Manny and his little daughter sending a paper dart over the Brooklyn roof-tops) tells us in a thoroughly clunky Hollywood manner that these are, after all, very decent people.

Monsters and Men isn’t just an angry movie about “Black Lives Matter” pushing all the right emotional buttons. It goes much deeper than that in its concerns, covering the experience of virtually anyone who speaks “truth to power”. The film premiered in Sundance 2018, where it was described as a “hit”. It is out in cinemas across the UK on Friday, January 18th and then on VoD on Monday, January 21st.

I dream of a Black Europe!

Posted on by victorfraga

The symbolism of the latest World Cup win couldn’t be clearer. Nineteen out of 23 players of the French football team are either immigrants or children of immigrants. The majority of those are of Black heritage, either from Africa and the Caribbean. Steve Mandanda, Alphonse Areola, Presnel Kimpembe, Rafael Xavier Varane, Samuel Umitite, Djibril Sidibe, Benjamin Mendy, Paul Pogba, Corentin Tolisso, N’Golo Kante, Blaise Matuidi, Steven Nzonzi, Thomas Lemar, Ousmane Dembele are amongst those. And the big revelation of the world Kylian Mbappe is entirely of African descent. Mbappe became so successful and synonymous with his home nation that the French newspapers twisted the French national motto to include the 19-year-old player “Liberté, Egalité, Mbappé”.

This is wonderful news. Even the most ardent bigots and xenophobes had to recognise and to face a multicultural and diverse Europe. But is the same phenomenon reflected in cinema? Unfortunately the answer is a resounding NO. Black Europeans are yet to leave their mark on European cinema. The number of Black European filmmakers remains extremely low, and the names are scarce, particularly outside Britain. This is in contrast to the US, where established Black filmmakers of both sexes have been challenged the racial orthodoxy of the film industry for quite some time, including extremely dirty names such as Spike Lee, Denzel Washington, Dee Rees and Gina Prince-bythewoods, to name just a few.

Well, it’s about time that the UK embraces the Windrush generation (pictured above) and Black Brits more wholeheartedly in the film industry. Likewise for the rest of Europe. We need more “Afropean” helmers, who can show us Europe from a Black perspective. We’ve had enough whitewashing in the film industry.

Below is a list with some of the most promising black talent behind the camera in Europe. We hope that these talented artists will continue to flourish with many more films to come, and also that the list will grow massively in the years to come. Alongside “Liberté, Egalité, Mbappé”, let’s also sing “God Save our glorious (Steve) McQueen” in the very near future. We want Black Europeans to shine on the football field, behind the film lenses and everywhere else.

You might also want to check out the Women of the Lens for Black female talent in film in the UK and beyond. Also, don’t forget to click on the film titles below in order to accede to our exclusive dirty review (where available).

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1. Steve McQueen (United Kingdom, pictured below):

McQueen is the most successful black European filmmaker at present. The London-born and Amsterdam-based helmer has directed the critically acclaimed Hunger (2008), Shame (2011) and the multiple Academy Award winner 12 Years a Slave (2013).

2. Damani Baker (United Kingdom):

This British cinematographer and filmmaker is best known for his feature The House of Coco Road (2017), a tribute to Caribbean women in the UK (more specifically, the director’s mother.

3. Amma Asante (United Kingdom):

Amma Asante is also British, and she is a screenwriter, a film director and also a former actress. Her filmography includes Belle (2013) and A United Kingdom (2016).

4. Isabelle Boni-Claverie (Switzerland/France):

Originally born in the Ivory Coast, this author, screenwriter and film director moved to Switzerland when was just a few months ago, and she now lives in France. She directs mostly documentaries, and her best known title is Too Black To Be French? (2015).

5. Amandine Gay (France, pictured below):

This French feminist, filmmaker and actress is just 33 years old. Her documentary Ouvrir la Voix (2015) was made by the means of crowdfunding, and includes interviews with 24 Black women in France.

6 – Mo Asumang (Germany):

This 54-year-old filmmaker was born in the former German capital, Bonn. He has already directed seven featurettes on various topics including race and veganism.

7 – Oliver Hardt (Germany):

This filmmaker is based in Frankfurt am Main. His portfolio consists of award-winning documentaries and high-profile corporate films for firms and institutions such as Mercedes Benz, Lufthansa, the German Design Council and the Art Institute of Chicago.

8 – Sally Fenaux Barleycorn (Spain):

Sally is based in Barcelona. Her first fiction short film Skinhearts, premiered in Amsterdam in 2015. She has now directed her first two adult films with XConfessions as a Guest director, Touch Crimes (2016) and Tinder Taxi (2017).

9 – Fred Kudjo Kworno (Italy, pictured above):

This activist-producer-writer-director, was born and raised in Italy and now based in New York (US). He directed the brilliant Blaxploitalian: 100 Years of Blackness in Italian Cinema (2015).

10 – Bibi Fadlalla (the Netherlands):

Bibi Fadlalla is a filmmaker based in Rotterdam. Bibi has worked for several Dutch television programmes and has directed several documentaries.