Have you ever been to Peckham Multiplex? It’s amazing if you’re on a budget. The last time I went the tickets were £4.99, the carpets were sticky, we were watching Attack The Block and the banter that shot across the audience made the film even better than it was. That was the night I fell in love with John Boyega. I didn’t know how much of a star he’d become but I remember feeling he was special. At the end of 2014 when the Star Wars teaser was released, I screamed a scream from my soul when John Boyega jerked onto the screen. Star Wars has never meant anything to me, but when I saw he was in it, instantly I knew I had to get a ticket, I had to brush up on my knowledge, I needed to know everything there was to know about this war in the stars. That’s the power of representation.
Read moreChi-Raq & Spike Lee's Accidental Misogynoir
Spike Lee is to Woke what Wiley is to Grime; The Godfather. What is “woke”? Well, it can be used as a noun or an adjective. To be woke is to be conscious or enlightened specifically about socio-political current affairs and history. At the end of School Daze [1988] Spike Lee has Morpheus shouting “Wake-Up!” as a call to action not only for the other characters, but for the audience as well. Throughout his films and documentaries Lee’s desire to encourage viewers to be conscious of the effects of colonialism, racism, segregation and police brutality, to name a few of society’s ills, have been both artistic and effective. Chi-raq is no different. It is a beautiful, powerful, heart breaking retelling of Lysistrata, the Greek satire by Aristophanes. In all his hyperconsciousness, one subject slipped past him in creating Chi-Raq- misogynoir.
Read moreBritish With American Taste... In TV
“Watch where you’re going nigger.” Shouted a large, leather clad biker after he nearly knocked me down one spring afternoon in 1998 when my mother and I were on our way to what is now the Morrison’s in Peckham. Even at that age I had to look around for who he was talking to because I personally didn’t know any niggers and I knew for damn sure I wasn’t one. Look, the truth was I didn’t even know I was black until I returned to Britain or rather I didn’t know it was a thing. I had lived in Zimbabwe with my grandparents up until late 1996 and had started life with black, brown and white friends who I considered all to be the same, to me we were all Africans. More than that we were all just people. When I got to London I didn’t understand why the houses were so close together, why the cold was a palpable thing you could almost touch or why people who looked like me were so hard to find on the TV. Thank God my mum, in her infinite wisdom, always knew which channel and at what time black people would be on the TV. As the nineties wound down and the noughties took hold it became harder and harder to find black or brown people on mainstream British Television in shows made for and by us. One by one my favourite British TV shows for people of colour were killed off; 3 Non-Blondes 2003, The Crouches in 2005, The Kumars at No.42 in 2006, Little Miss Jocelyn in 2008 and soon all I had left was my beloved Sky channel; Trouble.
Read more#OscarsSoWhite & Hotep Tears
I can now instantaneously diagnose tweets, so when Chris Sumlin made it his mission to point out that while we were “worried about Leonardo Dicaprio not having an Oscar Will Smith has never been honoured either” I swiftly categorised his tweets as Hotep. "How can we be actively wishing the white man success while our black brothers are left to suffer?" Please visit The Visibility Project so you too will be able to easily identify members of Hotep twitter.
Read moreMy 8ful Problems With The Hateful Eight
Something aint clean in the water. The water being Mr Quentin Tarantino’s latest film The Hateful Eight and the “aint clean” referring to the never-ending list of problems I had with this picture. I’ve condensed that long list to just 8 points because firstly who has time and secondly I thought it would be cute. My issues with the film are unfortunate as they overshadow what is otherwise an awesome mystery with a great plot twist. It’s like a post American civil war Murder She Wrote and Samuel L Jackson’s Angela Lansbury.
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