A Dream Deferred?
DURING THE two years I programmed the London Lesbian and Gay Film Festival (2004–2005) I did not receive a single submission from Black or Asian filmmakers in the UK. I was the first person of colour in the Festival’s twenty-year history who’d been acknowledged as a programmer, and as most of my work is concerned with exploring narratives about people of colour and LGBT people in particular, I was anxious to see these stories on the screens of the National Film Theatre.
I trawled through universities and colleges in the UK and found nothing. I did however find Arabic-descent lesbians in Switzerland, Indian women filmmakers in India, African gay men and lesbians from South Africa, and, as usual, a good number from the USA and Canada. Themes varied from questioning gender identities to coming out, and from domestic violence, spirituality and traditions to just plain love stories. But from the UK - silence.
I asked myself if anyone still wanted to make films in the UK. Did they want to, but lacked the confidence? Is equipment still too expensive? Or, now that we see LGBT people of colour on TV and film, do we no longer care who tells our stories, just as long as they’re there? Is there still a complex matrix of white privilege and post-modern sleight of hand that makes it difficult to get funding for queer work authored by people of colour in the mainstream film and TV industries and the independent sector?
I didn’t think there would ever be such a queer film desert when in 1990, as an apprentice in the film industry, I was taken to see Isaac Julien’s Looking for Langston (1988), a film about the poet Langston Hughes. It blew me away. I realised then that it was both possible and legitimate to tell Black queer stories on the big screen: that as queer people of colour we did not have to filter our ethnicity from our sexualities.
The pressure to choose between our allegiances to our parents’ cultures and the “gay” culture we adopt, is a perennial dilemma for many Black and Asian LGBT people in the UK. Underlying it all is a basic human need for somewhere we can call home, somewhere to belong. We often feel that in order to belong to the dominant queer culture we must take on white European Christian models of aesthetics and socialising; values which are sometimes in direct conflict with our learned cultural values. We also know that it is sometimes a struggle to be ”out and proud” in our minority communities, and nearly impossible to find queer minority stories and histories in cinema or on television.
Looking for Langston was a landmark. It was the first British film to draw together all the influences, both historical and contemporary, about African gay male lineage. Julien skilfully combined visuals and sound to capture the specificity of African-descent homoerotic desire. Using Hughes’ poems, he also portrayed the closeted poet’s desire for men and combined the poems with texts from out African gay poets like Essex Hemphill. Julien showed that homosexuality was not ”white people’s nastiness” and that non-white LGBT cultures had unique languages, histories and traditions that were different from the majority white gay culture.
I didn’t realise at the time that Looking for Langston was the beginning of a short burst of queer filmmaking of colour that would peak only a few years later. It seemed then as if things could only get better for Black and Asian filmmakers wanting to tell similar stories. In the 1990s our dreaming began in earnest that the cinematic representation of Britain and Britishness and homosexuality was going to be challenged by lesbians and gay men. Ironically, the foundation for this hope had been laid about ten years previously by a hostile Conservative government.
Most of the funds that enabled viewers to access this queer material in our homes came initially from Channel 4 Television. Created in 1982 by an Act of Parliament led by Margaret Thatcher, Channel 4 had a remit to provide for those audiences that were not catered for by the other terrestrial channels; ie. minority constituents: women, gays, ethnics, politicos. It was set up as a tough challenge to the terrestrials, and was predicted to fail. Being Thatcher’s bastard child, the Channel stuck two fingers up at the Conservative establishment. Funded by revenue from the ITV franchises and with no direct responsibility to advertisers, it could afford to be the enfant terrible of broadcasting. Channel 4 was experimental, challenging and innovative – too much so for some viewers.
In the 1980s, Britain appeared to be in revolution and in flux, and British nationhood was up for grabs. Geographic and psychic territories were being renegotiated and contested by first- and second-generation immigrants of colour. Inner-city areas with large immigrant communities in London and Liverpool were gripped by violent street riots. Disenfranchised youths, many from ethnic minorities, went on the rampage in Toxteth, Brixton, and Handsworth to express their frustration at being constantly policed, treated like criminals, and discriminated against in the job market.
Lord Scarman was appointed to determine why minority communities felt they had to riot to be heard by the establishment. Among his recommendations to improve trust between the police and minority ethnic communities was his advice to recruit more Black and Asian officers, a step which led indirectly to the creation of the Police Complaints Authority.
And there was AIDS. Mass hysteria engendered through fear and ignorance meant that many people, including some health care professionals, were afraid to touch anyone infected with HIV. Without the development of retroviral drugs, being HIV positive would almost certainly lead to death. In the UK, TV adverts with falling tombstones reinforced the grim reaper analogy. Gay people could roll over and play dead or fight back.
Some artists and filmmakers used their anger to create works which articulated their frustration. To be out in your work was to stand up and be counted, to be outed was to be scorned. Derek Jarman was a poster boy for a generation of (white) queer filmmakers who were uncompromising in their queer political filmic visions. Others included Richard Kwietniowski, Stuart Marshall and Constantine Giannis, some of whose films were funded by Channel 4, others they self-financed.
In 1986, in response to the body of work being created by film and video artists and directors, the first London Lesbian and Gay Film Festival was set up. These filmmakers were the people I looked up to and wanted to emulate, but until I saw Isaac’s work, I didn’t even have a language to express my(Black)self artistically.
The mid-1980s also saw the rise of the independent film workshop movement set up through the ACTT Workshop Declaration and funded by Channel 4 and the Greater London Council. The workshops were created to provide new structures and working methods for filmmakers who chose to work outside the mainstream film and broadcasting industries.
The Black workshops that came out of this environment included Ceddo Film and Video, Black Audio Film Collective, Sankofa Film and Video Collective and Retake Film and Video. These workshops made films that challenged the dominant ideologies of (white) cinema. Arguably, the extreme right-wing political context at this time acted as a catalyst for the production of politically and aesthetically uncompromising films that challenged white supremacy, dominant gender relations, and homophobia. Sankofa Film and Video Collective, however, was the only workshop to make any gay work.
In 1989 Channel 4 upped the ante by commissioning Out on Tuesday, and in one click, gay stories were now in your face and on the telly. Not to mention those of our parents’, too! In the five years the series ran, filmmakers of colour, such as Pratibha Parmar, Isaac Julien, Sonali Fernando, Topher Campbell, Rita Smith and myself were commissioned to make short documentaries. It really looked as if the film and TV industries were finally opening up to racial and sexual diversity and trying to move beyond empty tokenistic gestures.
Using Out on Tuesday as a springboard, Pratibha Parmar produced “Flesh and Paper” (1990), a film about the writer Suniti Namjoshi, and “Khush” (1991), a documentary about diasporic South Asian lesbians and gay men. Parmar’s work is driven by rigorous academic thought and a strong belief in the ideology and politics of lesbian feminism and ethnicity as mobilising forces for creativity. As a highly committed lesbian artist, she has a loyal international following and has received consistent critical acclaim for both her films and academic writing. Parmar has moved into drama, and is currently shooting the UK’s first Asian lesbian feature, Nina’s Heavenly Delights, set in Scotland.
After Looking for Langston, Isaac Julien directed the feature Young Soul Rebels (1991) about two gay pirate radio DJs, one of whom gets arrested for a homophobic murder. Julien’s lyrical documentary, The Darker Side of Black (1994), explored ragga music and homophobia. But chasing funds for further features proved difficult and Julien moved into the gallery space, which was friendlier to difference in terms of identity and narrative forms. Using the camera as a chisel, Julien’s work is characterised by detail to beauty and scrutiny of the Black body. He is Britain’s most successful Black queer artist filmmaker and his gallery works include installations like “Long Road to Mazatlan” (1999), “Vagabondia” (2000) and more recently “Fantôme Créole” (2005). In 2001 he was shortlisted for the Turner Prize.
Other filmmakers of colour came in at the tail-end of Channel 4’s gay TV orgy, many to make films about reclaiming history. I was commissioned to direct a film about Black lesbian history and stories, “BD Women” (1994), which won a Black Filmmakers Hall of Fame Award; Black lesbian poet and philosopher, Audre Lorde, was eulogised in Sonali Fernando’s “Body of a Poet” (1995); Topher Campbell directed “Homecoming” (1996), a film about the queer photographer, Ajamu X, and his quest for a place to call home.
A major breakthrough came about in 2001 when Rikki Beadle Blair directed, wrote and starred in the television series Metrosexuality about a polyracial, pansexual London community. Beadle Blair, who co-wrote the critically acclaimed feature Stonewall (1995), already had a successful reputation as a screen and theatre writer. His recent play, Bashment (2005), deals with queerbashing, dancehall, homophobia and queer love, and is part of Beadle Blair’s general change in focus away from films to theatre,
where the boundaries of colour and culture seem easier to shift.
The theatre is seeing a consistent growth of Black gay writers/directors creating for the stage: Paul Boakye’s Boy with Beer (1995) explores the clash of class and culture; Steven Luckie’s Talking about Men has guys tell revealing stories in a sauna, and his Junior’s Story (2005) deals with a young Black rent boy; Chris Rodriguez’s High Heels Parrot Fish (2005) is about a drag show in Trinidad; Queenie’s Sin Dykes (1998) breaks taboos around lesbian sexuality; and Troy Fairclough’s You Don't Kiss (2002) follows three Black gay men in their search for love.
By 2000, identity politics had begun to unravel and people were questioning the labels. Is ”gay“ really shorthand for ”gay white culture”? If feminism is about liberating all women, why are certain women still privileged over others? AIDS – no longer the “gay disease” – is devastating people of colour in First and Third World countries. The clear lines between “oppressor” and “oppressed” drawn by identity politics appear to be dissolving. It has become more important to examine what someone believes, rather than who
they’re fucking or the colour of their skin.
Britain in the 21st Century is more at ease with issues of sexuality, race and ethnicity than twenty years ago. A person of colour is now more likely to be accepted as British. White urban British people quote chicken tikka masala as their national dish and use Jamaican patois and Bengali slang unselfconsciously and with meticulous pronunciation. The public have voted for a gay man and a transsexual to win Big Brother! The vindictive Section 28 has been repealed, and gay men and lesbians can now enter into civil partnerships. Homosexuals and their stories are de riguer in mainstream television and cinema programmes.
Even minority ethnic gays are being included: Asher D from So Solid Crew plays a gay man in Holby; Marcell McCalla plays a gay footballer outed by The Sun in Footballers’ Wives; Ofo Uhiara plays a gay character in The Bill, who marries his (white) lover. And Andrew Mundy-Castle, a Black heterosexual man, has recently directed a self-financed short called “Twice as Hard” (2005) about perceptions of male homosexuality in the Black community that will screen at this year’s London Lesbian and Gay Film Festival. It seems homosexual representation in communities of colour is no longer quite so scary even for actors or filmmakers who aren’t gay.
The digital revolution has also enabled filmmakers to make their own movies with MiniDV cameras and relatively inexpensive editing software. I was able to finance, with the help of friends, “Paradise Lost” (2003), a documentary about homosexuality in the Caribbean. And Topher Campbell has produced “Don't Call Me Battyman” (2004) about dance hall culture and homophobia. And yet, with this access and tolerance, there is still not a wealth of material, and funding is still non-existent.
As we ease on down the yellow brick road to the Emerald City of mainstream acceptance we should remember that the Wizard wasn’t all he was cracked up to be. The conventions of dominant cinema and television haven’t really changed, and even though we see more Black and queer faces, the people making the programmes and controlling the imagery still bow to white supremacist beliefs and hetero-normative ideology.
We must examine closely what we’re sacrificing in order to be “accepted” by dominant cultures. Those who feel smug because they’re allowed to sup at ”Massa’s table in the Great House” should look to see who is being left out in the cold. Ancient conflicts are being replayed like those between Islam and Christianity and the values of the Occident versus the Orient. And the “War on Terror” is where those historical lines of conflict are being reframed. If we want to see truly inclusive, diverse, complex representations
of queer people of colour we may have to look outside commercial cinema and television.
If we want to see queer films as a consistent body of work we LGBT people need to take control. There are hungry audiences wanting to see our queer stories; the growing numbers who flock to lesbian and gay film festivals worldwide are evidence of that. It is time for us to take up our cameras, and, like those pioneers before us, to refuse to accept no for an answer, and just go ahead and make the films we want to make by any means necessary.
1. Get your hands on equipment. Any equipment
will do. Don’t be fussy. Just practise
your craft.
2. Read books. Can’t afford them? –
Borrow/Order them from your library.
3. Learn about your personal histories. Talk to
your family. Get their stories.
4. Look beneath the collective lies from your
own culture and background, and don’t be
afraid to be true to your own reality.
5. Don’t compare yourself to other filmmakers.
You are unique.
6. Learn about film history in the UK and
around the world.
7. Get money from anyone you can. If you’re
not a good businessperson, find someone
who is. If the (white) funders won’t give
you money, make your film anyway.
8. Get together an informal support network
to give you feedback on your projects. The
formal ones take too much time and effort.
9. Finish your film to the best quality you can
afford.
10. Don’t be put off if people find your work
challenging and argue angrily with you. If
you want to be popular, enter a beauty
contest.
11. Show your film in festivals and at any
event you can.
12. Audiences will be touched by your film,
your story. Feel the warm reception.
Page(s) 46-49
magazine list
- Features
- zines
- 10th Muse
- 14
- Acumen
- Agenda
- Ambit
- Angel Exhaust
- ARTEMISpoetry
- Atlas
- Blithe Spirit
- Borderlines
- Brando's hat
- Brittle Star
- Candelabrum
- Cannon's Mouth, The
- Chroma
- Coffee House, The
- Dream Catcher
- Equinox
- Erbacce
- Fabric
- Fire
- Floating Bear, The
- French Literary Review, The
- Frogmore Papers, The
- Global Tapestry
- Grosseteste Review
- Homeless Diamonds
- Interpreter's House, The
- Iota
- Journal, The
- Lamport Court
- London Magazine, The
- Magma
- Matchbox
- Matter
- Modern Poetry in Translation
- Monkey Kettle
- Moodswing
- Neon Highway
- New Welsh Review
- North, The
- Oasis
- Obsessed with pipework
- Orbis
- Oxford Poetry
- Painted, spoken
- Paper, The
- Pen Pusher Magazine
- Poetry Cornwall
- Poetry London
- Poetry London (1951)
- Poetry Nation
- Poetry Review, The
- Poetry Salzburg Review
- Poetry Scotland
- Poetry Wales
- Private Tutor
- Purple Patch
- Quarto
- Rain Dog
- Reach Poetry
- Review, The
- Rialto, The
- Second Aeon
- Seventh Quarry, The
- Shearsman
- Smiths Knoll
- Smoke
- South
- Staple
- Strange Faeces
- Tabla Book of New Verse, The
- Thumbscrew
- Tolling Elves
- Ugly Tree, The
- Weyfarers
- Wolf, The
- Yellow Crane, The