Tag: Idris Elba

Yardie

Posted on by victorfraga

It’s the first time that Idris Elba gets behind the camera. And it’s only natural that cinema-lovers are very curious to see what he makes of the eponymous novel by the Jamaica-born British writer Victor Headley, published by X Press in 1992. The Hackney-born actor-turned-director transports us to 1973 in Jamaica in order to follow the story of a young man called D (Dennis), played by Camden-born Aml Ameen (from Menhaj Huda’s 2006 Kidulthood), who grows up at the time of brutal gangs fights in Kingston, the Jamaican capital. D’s present and future perspectives lead the viewer through the story.

Luckily for him, D lives outside the ultra-violent inner town. His Rastafarian brother Jerry (Everaldo Creary), who conveys a message of peace through music, and his childhood sweetheart Yvonne (Shantol Jackson) are his pole stars. Jerry’s tragic and brutal murder is the catalyst for the boy’s descent into crime. He becomes the pupil of music producer-gangster King Fox (Sheldon Shepherd). Soon, something tragic happens, leaving D traumatised and scarred for life.

King Fox sends D to London in order to deliver a package of cocaine to Rico (Stephen Graham), a white Jamaican gangster ruling over the Hackney crime and music scene in 1983. The actor embraces the role through his own heritage (his paternal grandftather was Jamaican) and portrays another iconic short-tempered crime-lord, reminiscent of his role as Al Capone in the HBO series Boardwalk Empire.

The music scene is an actual film character per se. The vibes of Carlton and the Shoes, Winston Francis, Yellowman, Dennis Brown, The Isley Brothers and many others lead the viewer into the story’s development and will make those who grew up in East London in the 1970s and 1980s feel extremely nostalgic.

In Hackney, D does not seek Rico. Instead, he reunites with Yvonne and meet their daughter for the very first time. Yvonne had earlier moved to London in order to escape a life of violence in Kingston. Yvonne represents the archetype of the Windrush generation: a strong woman, a hard-working nurse and a doting mother who puts the welfare and future of her daughter above everything else. She is also the moral compass to D, whose good nature of the youth has mostly morphed into trauma, brutality and the desire for revenge. These portrayals are particularly powerful and meaningful following the Windrush scandal, and the denunciation of decades of institutional racism in Britain.

In a nutshell, Yardie is a gangster movie with a touch of comic relief, and also a story of tormented love, affection and regret. To boot, this is a film about British-Jamaican relations and cultural exchange. It reveals how much Jamaicans and West Indians contributed to the progress and development of Britain. It should resonate with people on both sides of the Atlantic.

Yardie is out in UK theatres on Friday, August the 31st. Out on VoD in December. It might become the first installment of a trilogy of movies, just like Headley’s novels. Fingers crossed!

How many Black people can you leave waiting outside?

Posted on by victorfraga

Not even in his wildest dreams could actor, filmmaker and DJ Idris Elba have guessed the commotion that he was about to cause in Hackney. The artist has recently decided to step behind the camera in order to direct his first feature film (he had previously directed for television), a movie about the London Afro-Caribbean community in the 1980s. That’s about as much as we all know about the film. In order to help him, he hired Key Casting, a casting company that seems to have underestimated Elba’s popularity. The announcement invited everyone to come to an open audition set in a single day. At 16:00, when Key Casting was due to open its doors, there were already 500 people queuing up.

Apparently, all was going according to plan. There was no one controlling the queue, apart from two doormen. No one handed out queue numbers. And the two ushers were confident everyone would get in, as they had plenty of time – the casting process would end at 21:00. Waiting was supposed to be a fun, after all.

Black faces were to be seen everywhere in the queue.

Express yourself

And indeed it was fun. Almost everyone in the line was Black. I saw two Japanese women, a White couple and maybe three more Whites close to me. There was a tap dancer who entertained us for two hours. There was also a singer/cheerleader who talked to passers-by. There were people greeting each other as if they hadn’t met in ages. And some of the costumes were fabulous: there was a guy dressed up like a Soul Train character, and another one as Eddie Murphy in Coming to America (John Landis, 1988).

Black people are hungry for representation in film, it soon became clear to me. They want to be heard, they want to be seen, they want to tell their stories. And they have Idris Elba as a role model. Last year, he made it to the Time’s list of the 100 Most Influential People in the World.

Suliman Suliman, an aspiring actor, told me that he has been waiting for 50 minutes. “I just went to the back of the line. There wasn’t anyone of the company [Key Casting] to inform me of what to do”.

Dionne Wright, an adolescent therapist, got in. She arrived at 17:00 (I arrived at 16:10 and I didn’t get in). “We just came through this way”, she said pointing to some sort of secondary queue next to the entrance. “My partner works at the casting company. But we don’t know when the film is going to be shot”.

Maysa (left) and the lucky Dionne are pictured together.

The pearly gates are shut

After two hours queuing up, we realised that no one was moving. Some people – among them Whites – were blocking the entrance. The two doormen asked people to step back, but that was nigh on impossible. Some people were filming the queue. Then a few people were cherry-picked to go inside. Marie-Felie, a comptroller in an oil and gas company, was one of the lucky few. “I don’t know why I was chosen. Maybe because I sent them an email, but I didn’t receive an answer. Inside they were very gentle. They took my details, they took my measures and my picture. But I know nothing about the film”.

People at the front of the queue then began pushing and trying to force their way in, and chaos quickly ensued. The police were called and they shut down the entrance at around 19:00, two hours prior to the scheduled closing time.

The police also showed up, but they surely weren’t joining the audition.

This whole experience is a testament that there are few opportunities for Black people in British cinema. There is a huge gap between offer and demand, hence the tumult and the anger that I witnessed. We need more black stories in cinema. It’s not right to call for an “open audience” and then shut down the doors prematurely with large crowds left outside. Black people need a large gate into the film industry, not a very small door.