Those of you who read last month’s edition of the BUFF Blog
will recall that the film in question was entitled ‘Woolwich Boys’ (2012) – the
closing movie of last year’s British Urban Film Festival and which recently
screened as part of this year’s BUFF Spring Season. For the record, and as is
custom with all films that are ever made, disclaimers can occasionally be used to make political or similar points.
This is neither. And in light of recent events, BUFF feels compelled to state that
although ‘Woolwich Boys’ was based on a true story, all characters that were
depicted in it are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or
dead, is purely coincidental. The blog in question (in addition to all the BUFF
Blogs which have ever been published since April 2009) is still available to
read online.
This month’s blog
comes from another angle – dealing with the issues of perception, race and the
media.
The recent BAFTA
Television awards (broadcast on BBC One) seemed to reaffirm long-held
prejudices (in this country anyway) with no black actors or actresses up for
nomination in any of the appropriate categories but yet feature in some of the
UK’s most watched and critically acclaimed television programmes.
Calling a spade a
spade doesn’t apply to the BAFTA awards it seems. For instance – and completely
off tangent – if you were the producer of the ITV documentary which exposed
Jimmy Savile as a rampant paedophile and which, to this day, is still making
the news with revelation after revelation, and you didn’t get the BAFTA award
for best current affairs, how would you feel? For the record the award went to
a BBC documentary about the Catholic Church and paedophilia…
On a lighter
note, this month’s blog (guest-written by Ron Belgrave from Sankofa Televisual)
welcomes UK audiences to a new brand of light entertainment – follow @buffenterprises
and @Sankofa_TV and @AfricaChannelUK on Twitter…
Mirror, Mirror – Caribbean Programmes on British Television
There are a number of vertical
glass surfaces in any home and many of these can reflect your image. Most of
them are ordinary windows which, in the right light and with the right angle,
can give a reasonably good reflection. Best of all are, of course, the mirrors
which provide a clear (and hopefully pleasing) image. However, the glass
surface that most disappoints in terms of reflection is the television screen –
particularly if you are Black in Britain.
This is true for the 400 or so stations
on the Virgin Media cable platform and for the 650+ stations on the Sky
satellite platform. But where it matters the most is on the 50+ stations currently occupying the prime
Freeview digital terrestrial platform that broadcasts, for free, into the vast
majority of the 25 million households in Britain. Due to its huge reach across
the population and that it is home to the nation’s flagship TV channels
(including the global ranging and “public funded” BBC) Freeview wields immense
power in shaping the country’s values and thoughts and how communities are (or
aren’t) validated.
The issue of the absence of Black
faces on TV in Britain has been a longstanding concern
going back to the 1970s and remains an unresolved issue. The fear of victimisation
and reprisal has hampered many in the industry from speaking openly about what
was happening to them and it took actor Patrick Robinson a decade to reveal
that he was punished and denied acting roles for ten years after voicing his
concerns about
the BBC. Recently David
Harewood, Morgan
Freeman, Lenny
Henry, Reggie
Yates and Paterson
Joseph have all also put their heads above the parapet and talked about the
systemic and institutional blockades in the film and television industry in
Britain (particularly on the main Freeview channels – BBC, ITV, C4, C5 and Sky).
Hopefully united voices will mean that they won’t suffer retribution through denial
of work and other punishment.
However, what are the
roles/stories/programmes that these actors (speaking on behalf of the wider
community) are seeking to see on British screens? Probably those that reflect
the wide spectrum of the lives of Black people in Britain. That would be
wonderful. But would that be enough?
Data from the 2011 UK census
indicates that there are four interconnecting and overlapping elements of the
Black community in Britain – Caribbean, African, Black British and mixed-race.
It is probably the Black British
element that the actors above have (rightly) most strongly argued for but,
despite recent and rare delights such as E4’s Youngers, BBC’s Some Girls and ITV’s Ice
Cream Girls, the amount of available content is woefully and disgracefully
low. But one has to look way back to the 1970s, 80s and 90s to the times of ‘Empire
Road’, ‘The Fosters’, ‘No Problem’, ‘Desmond’s’ and ‘The Real McCoy’ to find
any regular Black faces on what would now be Freeview in Britain.
Although not on Freeview, the
African community has done well to establish successful and sustained TV
channels on the Sky satellite network. These channels reflect not only the
lives of the British African communities but also strongly reflect the cultures
that they still draw on from Africa itself. The existence of these channels
also helped to support the development of the first ever British African sitcom
series Meet The Adebanjos.
The main element of the Black
community that is therefore missing from the television screens of Britain is
the Caribbean community. Despite Caribbeans living in the UK, in numbers, for
over half a century there are no Caribbean channels on any of the platforms and
almost no Caribbean content or programmes on any of the other 1,000 channels.
There have been attempts to
establish channels in the past (such as ACTV and IDTV) but these have not been
successful. Others are exploring going online with channels (like BVTV) or web-series (like Brothers
With No Game and All About The McKenzies). But despite that, and after 50
years, British Caribbeans still have no regular (non-music) presence on any TV
platform in the UK.
However, the first step in
seeking to get Caribbean content regularly on British airwaves began in May
2013 with the broadcast of the first series to reach the UK from the Caribbean
in many years and the first ever from Barbados.
Distributed by Sankofa Televisual, “Keeping Up With
The Joneses” (KUWTJ) is a mockumentary-sitcom about a fictional family in
Barbados. KUWTJ features the Jones family who reluctantly become the subjects of
reality show entitled “Life & Times in the Caribbean”. It
requires that a camera crew follow the family around and films their every
move. Irving (the father) signs the contract to do the show against Angela’s
(his wife) wishes. Now, Irving, Angela, Tracy (their 17-year-old daughter) and
Nathan (their 10-year-old son) have to coexist while looking good for the
cameras, resulting in embarrassing encounters and hilariously awkward TV
moments!
When KUWTJ was shown locally by
the Caribbean Broadcasting Corporation in 2011 and 2012, it was viewed by
record audiences given that it was Barbados’s first sitcom.
With a new
episode broadcast every weekday in the UK from 13th to 31st
May on Sky 209 and Virgin 828 at 2:30pm and 11pm each day, if KUWTJ attracts
enough viewers then other Caribbean content may follow in the future. The video
trailer can be accessed here.
The drive to get Caribbean
programmes (dramas, films and other general entertainment) is supported by the
results of the 2012 British
Caribbean Television Survey where 98% of respondents said that they wanted
to watch programmes from the Caribbean on TV in Britain.
80% of the respondents also
regarded having Caribbean programmes in Britain as important for young people’s
development in the British Caribbean community. This is due to concerns that
the younger generations growing up in Britain seemed to know less and less
about the Caribbean and about their heritage and relations “back home” and
whether there is an association with the extent of serious youth violence in
Britain which very significantly affects the Black community in general
(especially in London) but notably those of Caribbean heritage. The ages of 11
to 15 are crucially important to young people as this is the key period when
they are looking to form their own identity and when they need to be able to
draw on appropriate cultural reference points. When these reference points do
not exist or are not sufficiently visible or mirrored in the media around them,
then there is a mismatch which can have negative consequences.
In time, if there is sufficient
support from viewers, the British Caribbean community may see its Caribbean
heritage reflected in the mirror of British television screens
(satellite/cable) more regularly but maybe not on Freeview (for the foreseeable
future).
Ron Belgrave is the Director of Sankofa Televisual
Those of you who would like to submit a script or a film for board consideration for this year’s British Urban Film Festival please visit the BUFF SUBMISSIONS 2013 page at http://www.britishurbanfilmfestival.co.uk
