ABSTRACT
A critically well-received film that explores issues of race, culture, class, and identity in working-class south London, Rage was also very successful in international film festivals, winning several prizes, including Best Director at the Pan-African Film Festival in Los Angeles, and the Prix Oumarou Ganda at FESPACO in 2001. However, instead of carving out a cultural niche as a director interested in liminal, troubled identities in multicultural Europe, Aduaka returned to West Africa for his second feature, the harrowing drama Ezra, about a child soldier from that region's brutal civil wars of the 1990s, who attempts to rebuild his life and face up to his past. Rage takes its title from the street name of the main character, Jamie, a mixed-race teenager who struggles with his identity. Any reassessment of Rage as a lost classic should not be limited, however, to a celebration of its 'energy', for it is also an immensely intelligent and articulate piece of filmmaking.
