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Category: Film Strands

Introduction to Pressure: A Tribute to Horace Ove

Hailed as Britain's first black feature film, Pressure is a hard-hitting, honest document of the plight of disenchanted British-born black youths. Set in 1970s London, it tells the story of Tony, a bright school-leaver, son of West Indian immigrants, who finds himself torn between his parents' church-going conformity and his brother's Black Power militancy. As his initially high hopes are repeatedly dashed – he cannot find work anywhere, potential employers treat him with suspicion because of his colour – his sense of alienation grows. In a bid to find a sense of belonging, he joins his black friends who, estranged from their submissive parents, seek…

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Talk: The Cultural Politics of Horace Ove

Hailed as Britain’s first black feature film, Pressure is a hard-hitting, honest document of the plight of disenchanted British-born black youths. Set in 1970s London, it tells the story of Tony, a bright school-leaver, son of West Indian immigrants, who finds himself torn between his parents’ church-going conformity and his brother’s Black Power militancy. As his initially high hopes are repeatedly dashed – he cannot find work anywhere, potential employers treat him with suspicion because of his colour – his sense of alienation grows. In a bid to find a sense of belonging, he joins his black friends who, estranged from their submissive parents, seek…

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Talk: Horace Ove: Documentary Filmmaker

Horace Ove is a Trinidadian-born British filmmaker, painter and writer and one of the leading black independent film-makers to emerge in Britain since the post-war period. Ove’s first film, Pressure, which tells the story of a London teenager who joins the Black Power movement in 1970’s, was banned for two years by its own backers, the British Film Institute (BFI). Other works include the 1978 documentary The Skateboard Kings, about pioneering Californian skateboarders Tony Alva and Stacey Peralta. Ove’s 1986 film, Playing Away starring Norman Beaton, is perhaps his most well-known work. The film centred around the residents of fictional British village Seddington, who invite…

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Talk: Horace Ove and Television

Continuing with footage from the Horace Ove Symposium, this recording brings together contributions from Peter Ansorge (producer 'Empire Road') and Jim Hawkins (script-writer 'A Hole in Babylon'). This session is chaired and introduced by Janet McCabe. This session is built around two works by Horace Ove. The first work focuses on in this session is  A Hole in Babylon (1979) http://www.screenonline.org.uk/tv/id a piece made by Ove as part of the long-running anthology series A Play for Today. This can be watched in full here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-NH7EUS9zFY. The second drama addresed is The Orchard House (1991) http://www.screenonline.org.uk/tv/id/570201/index.html. This is a four part period drama produced for Channel…

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Talk: The Cultural Politics of Horace Ove

With Julian Henriques, Robert Buckler and Laura Mulvey. Horace Ové was born in Belmont, Trinidad and Tobago, in 1939. He came to Britain in 1960 to study painting, photography and interior design. After working as a film extra in Rome, he returned to London to study at the London School of Film Technique. He began work on Man Out, a surreal film about a West Indian novelist who has a mental breakdown. The project was never completed, but in 1966 Ové directed The Art of the Needle, a short film for the Acupuncture Association. This was followed by another short, Baldwin's Nigger (1969), in…

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SCI/FILM: Parapsychology and Ghost Hunting on TV

by Billy Stanton May 4th marked the final event in the ongoing Sci/Film series at Birkbeck Cinema before the beginning of a year-long sabbatical; for the discussion were present Prof. Christopher French (head of the Anomalistic Psychology Research Unit, Goldsmiths) and Dr. Cecilia Sayad (Senior Lecturer, Film and Media, University of Kent), who has written at length on the subgenre of ghost-hunting television shows. In showing a full episode from season 3 of Most Haunted (filmed at the Schooner Hotel, and featuring long-since departed and disgraced medium Derek Acorah) in contast with clips from the (entirely fictional) Ghostwatch (1992) and the American series Paranormal State, what…

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Cinematic richness of Belgium

by Vladimir Seput, M.A. Student On Wednesday night, the 21st of February, Birkbeck Institute for the Moving Image was once again filled with people. This time, BIMI hosted Belgian film lovers (and those who might become ones) who came to watch and listen about the latest trends in Belgian cinema in a special, introductory event to the programme, Focus on Belgian Cinema. With the support of Wallonie-Bruxelles International and Flanders House, film critic and author Louis Danvers and Wouter Hessels, the film lecturer and cinema programmer at the Brussels Royal Institute for Theatre, Cinema and Sound travelled across the Channel to give talks on the…

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It Follows – University of Pittsburgh Annual Lecture

This article was contributed by Kelli Weston, an MPhil Film and Screen Media student In October, BIMI hosted the University of Pittsburgh’s annual lecture with a special talk by Adam Lowenstein’s on David Robert Mitchell’s film It Follows (2014). Shot and set in Detroit, Michigan, the film’s environmental implications often take a backseat to the thrill of its monsters, killings, and gore. Lowenstein’s talk, entitled ‘A Detroit Landscape with Figures: The Subtractive Horror of It Follows’, places the film firmly within the contemporary political and social climate of Detroit, a city that has, in recent years, become synonymous with scarcity and desolation. This scarcity is glaringly felt in It…

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Catch-up with us on Soundcloud

If you're looking for a recording of any of our talks, conferences or other events at BIMI you can find these on our dedicated Soundcloud page, which is constantly being updated with resources from both our archives and our latest events: Soundcloud (more…)

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Filming the Absent Mother

Filming the Absent Mother 14th of June 2014 This symposium was designed around the juxtaposition of two films – Histoire d’un secret (Mariana Otero 2003) and Un’ora sola ti vorrei (Alina Marazzi 2002) -, both about the disappearance of the director’s mother. Neither child was told anything about the circumstances of her mother’s death. Using differing aesthetic strategies, both films investigate the mother’s life and, in the process of unraveling the mystery of her disappearance, reveal social and psychosocial problems and issues that continue to be relevant for feminism. But the directors also use cinema and narration to address their own loss, creating a moving…

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