A vital new film sea­son is putting black stars in the spotlight

Launch­ing this Octo­ber to coin­cide with the 60^th BFI Lon­don Film Fes­ti­val, which this year is active­ly pro­mot­ing diver­si­ty, Black Star is the UK’s biggest ever sea­son of film and tele­vi­sion ded­i­cat­ed to cel­e­brat­ing the range, ver­sa­til­i­ty and pow­er of black actors. It will focus on the work of con­tem­po­rary actors like Samuel L Jack­son, David Oyelowo, Lupi­ta Nyong’o, Chi­we­tel Ejio­for, Sophie Okone­do and Den­zel Wash­ing­ton, as well as cinema’s first black stars, Josephine Bak­er, Lena Horne and Dorothy Dan­dridge, and endur­ing icons like Sid­ney Poiti­er, Whoopi Gold­berg, Paul Robe­son and Angela Bassett.

The sea­son has been pro­grammed by reg­u­lar LWLies con­trib­u­tor Ash­ley Clark, who gave us his thoughts on why now is a great time to be cel­e­brat­ing black stars: ​“There’s the recent #OscarsSoWhite con­tro­ver­sy, which is the lat­est in a cycli­cal series of flare-ups about the lack of diver­si­ty in the Acad­e­my, char­ac­terised most obvi­ous­ly, some would argue, by Oscar nom­i­na­tion snubs for actors like David Oyelowo in Sel­ma and Michael B Jor­dan in Creed. The Oscars con­tro­ver­sy also begat a much-need­ed con­ver­sa­tion around the types of roles that the Acad­e­my has his­tor­i­cal­ly reward­ed black actors for play­ing: slaves, maids, crim­i­nals, oth­er kinds of stereo­types. In the pro­gramme we’re not shy­ing away from that, but inves­ti­gat­ing it through talks, screen­ings and documentaries.

“Bring­ing things clos­er to home, there was much erro­neous recent report­ing that BBC’s Under­cov­er, with Sophie Okone­do and Adri­an Lester, was the first prime­time dra­ma fea­tur­ing two black leads. That’s actu­al­ly untrue, and it points toward a cul­tur­al amne­sia that we need to be vig­i­lant against. We’ll be address­ing that by high­light­ing some trail­blaz­ing black stars of British TV, includ­ing Car­men Munroe and Nor­man Beat­on, who were fine dra­mat­ic actors before they became house­hold names in Chan­nel 4 sit­com Desmond’s. That said, the icons and per­for­mances high­light­ed by Black Star are time­less, and we want to cel­e­brate them as great, last­ing art.”

Although Black Star is not intend­ed as a direct response to the cur­rent social cli­mates in the UK and US, Clark says that a num­ber of the films in the pro­gramme speak direct­ly to what’s hap­pen­ing today: ​“John Singleton’s sem­i­nal Boyz n the Hood is a prime exam­ple: it’s impos­si­ble to watch the film and not see very clear con­nec­tions to con­tem­po­rary issues of police bru­tal­i­ty and gen­tri­fi­ca­tion. I must con­fess that over time its impact had been dulled in my mind a lit­tle. But I watched it again recent­ly, and I was blown away, not just by the per­for­mances – Ice Cube is so sub­tle and per­sua­sive in his big screen debut – but at how mas­ter­ful­ly-direct­ed and cin­e­mat­ic it is. John Sin­gle­ton was only 23 when he made it, which is tru­ly amazing.”

In addi­tion, Black Star will bring numer­ous clas­sics back to the big screen, from In the Heat of the Night, re-released 18 Novem­ber cour­tesy of Park Cir­cus, to Stormy Weath­er, pre­sent­ed by Pic­ture­house nation­wide as part of The Fab­u­lous Nicholas Broth­ers pro­gramme. Speak­ing to the strong mix of films on show, Clark adds: ​“The pro­gramme has been organ­ised so as to tell many dif­fer­ent sto­ries, span­ning many dif­fer­ent peri­ods, in a digestible way. I hope audi­ences of all ages and back­grounds will be enter­tained and chal­lenged, but also learn lots of new things, con­nect dots, and dis­cov­er new faces.

Oth­er events include the UK pre­mière of the ear­li­est known all-black-cast film, 1913’s Bert Williams Lime Kiln Club Field day, which Clark notes is, ​“beau­ti­ful in its own right, but haunt­ing because it plays like an alter­nate his­to­ry of how black rep­re­sen­ta­tion might have played out in Amer­i­can cin­e­ma had DW Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation not poi­soned the well so effec­tive­ly two years lat­er. Peo­ple should look out for a focus on the bril­liant, sore­ly under­rat­ed Paul Robe­son, an Amer­i­can actor and singer who worked on both sides of the Atlantic and was an unstop­pable polit­i­cal fire­brand. There’s also some incred­i­bly rare Josephine Bak­er films, and week­enders focused on hip-hop and com­e­dy stardom.”

Recent­ly we’ve been look­ing back at the remark­able career of Den­zel Wash­ing­ton, star of our lat­est cov­er film The Mag­nif­i­cent Sev­en, and coin­ci­den­tal­ly Clark has picked out Washington’s per­for­mance in Spike Lee’s Mal­colm X as his favourite by a black actor. ​“Watch­ing Den­zel just embody Mal­colm X – the grow­ing matu­ri­ty, the inten­si­ty, the watch­ful­ness, the utter con­trol of his per­for­mance – is hyp­not­ic, and close to a reli­gious experience.”

Black Star runs Octo­ber to Decem­ber 2016 at cin­e­mas nation­wide, on BFI Play­er, on DVD and at BFI South­bank. For more info vis­it bfi​.org​.uk/​b​l​a​c​k​-star