Directing
Territories is an experimental documentary about the Notting Hill Carnival. It locates the event within the struggle between white authority and black youth, in this case over the contested spaces of the carnival, and reflects on its history as symbolic act of resistance. The film makes the case using montage: cutting carnival scenes with archive news reports - police surveillance to rioting in the street - and crossing looks of desire with alienation, from police to reveller, woman to man, man to man. Add to this a disembodied, political critique and trenchant images of police violence and the audience soon becomes aware that the documentary itself is part of the resistance.
Director Maureen Blackwood harnesses the distinctive style of the Sankofa Film Collective to sketch the Abrew family tree. The achievements of the unique showbiz family are celebrated using rich archive material, including footage of family members in supporting film roles alongside Paul Robeson and intimate fireside-style testimony. The existence of Black British communities before Windrush is foregrounded, with insights into the Abrews' imprint on British culture beginning in 19th century Scotland.
Co-directed by Blackwood and Julien, the first full-length feature film by Sankofa Film and Video offers a radical and necessary interrogation into what constitutes 'post-colonial' identity at a time of political and social restlessness in Britain. Set within an isolated desert landscape contrasted with recognizable scenes of the intensity of family life, this vanguard work demonstrates the richness and variety of the black experience; it is a poetic and hard-hitting commentary on the complexities of race, gender and sexuality.
Three friends return from a vacation and discover that the TV studio they work for has gone bankrupt - so they decide to start their own costume renting business.
To ease her homesickness Miriam recreates an aspect of home in her suburban British garden. Cultural memory exerts a healing power, combatting cultural appropriation, hostility towards migrants and the rift between Miriam and her Nigerian-British children.
Two actresses take us through a series of 'raps' and sketches about what it means to be beautiful and black.
