Description
Book SynopsisThis book looks at a sector of black and Asian British film and television as it presented itself in the 1990s and early 2000s. For this period, a ‘mainstreaming’ of black and Asian British film has been observed in criticism and theory and articulated by an increasing number of practitioners themselves, referring to changing modes of production, distribution and reception and implying a more popular and commercial orientation of certain media products. This idea is a leitmotif for the authors’ readings of recent films and examples of television drama, including such diverse products as Young Soul Rebels and Babymother, East Is East and Bend It Like Beckham, The Buddha of Suburbia and White Teeth. These analyses are supplemented with a look at earlier landmark productions (like Pressure) as well as relevant social, institutional and aesthetic frameworks. The book closes with a selection of statements by black and Asian media practitioners who operate from within Britain’s cultural industries: Mike Phillips, Horace Ové, Julian Henriques, Parminder Vir and Gurinder Chadha.
Trade Review”…a knowledgeable and useful account of contemporary British Cinema Studies…” in: Anglia, Band 123, Heft 3, 2005
Table of ContentsIntroduction CLAIMING STRUCTURES, BIDDING FOR THE MAINSTREAM Chapter 1 Black and Asian Britain and the Cultural Mainstream Chapter 2 Be Ourselves and Be Mainstream? ‘Black’ British Film Revisited Chapter 3 ‘Landmarks’: The Evolution of Black and Asian Narrative Film in Britain from the 1960s to the 1980s CASE STUDIES Chapter 4 Black Youth Films in the 1990s Chapter 5 Asian British Film since the 1990s Chapter 6 1990s Television Drama: Mainscreening Black and Asian British History Conclusion VOICES Mike PHILLIPS: Art, the Myth of Black Culture and the Struggle for British Identity Horace OVÉ: Belmont Olympic Julian HENRIQUES: Reggae Sound Systems, the Body and Film-Making Practices Parminder Vir in Interview Gurinder Chadha in Interview Bibliography Index
