ABSTRACT
The recognition of Black1 film-making in Britain and the associated notion of a Black British cinema is a phenomenon of the 1980s. During that decade, the politics of race and ethnicity, of diversity and difference, emerged as signifiers of the ways in which Britain had to confront its colonial and imperialist history. Before 1980, Black filmmaking in Britain existed on the periphery of both the ‘mainstream’ and the ‘independent sector’.The pioneering careers of Edric Connor and Lloyd Reckord (Ten Bob in Winter, 1963) were short-lived. Lionel Ngakane, who made Jemima and Johnny (1964), was not able to make another film as a ‘British’ director.2 Horace Ove, who made his first film, The Art of the Needle, in 1966 is the only film-maker of that generation to continue making films.3
