Black film matters

Sight & Sound: the September 2020 issue

Michaela Coel on I May Destroy You. Plus histories of protest and activism in Black British Cinema and of the Black Film Bulletin, the cast and crew of Rocks and, from our archives, Isaac Julien on Young Soul Rebels.

Carrying the flame of the Black Film Workshop

Second Sight, a touring programme of black British filmmaking past and present, looks to revive the spirit of the 1980s film workshop movement with four new commissions. What are the prospects for this new generation, asks Grace Barber-Plentie.
Tuesday 18 February 2020

Rapman on the road to Blue Story: “If you can prove it online then why go the film school route?”

From his YouTube sensation Shiro’s Story to his friendship-across-the-gangwar-divide feature debut Blue Story – Andrew ‘Rapman’ Onwubolu, a rapper with a camera and a vision, tells Will Massa how he took the film industry by storm.
Wednesday 20 November 2019

Merata: the Maori film legend and her legacy

Pioneering filmmaker Merata Mita was “the spark that actually set the fire” for indigenous cinema, as a new Netflix documentary about her by her son Hepi reminds the world, writes So Mayer.
Monday 7 October 2019

Maureen Blackwood: “I wanted to make films about lives and issues that were forgotten”

Ahead of a rare chance to see the work of the acclaimed writer-director on the big screen, she talks to Karen Alexander about her pioneering, radical career, and offers advice for new filmmakers today.
Wednesday 24 July 2019

John Singleton obituary: the b-boy who made Hollywood

The self-driven Los Angeleno came in like thunder with Boyz N the Hood, a film that put himself, his neighbourhood and the cause of black American directing into the spotlight – and there would be more from him but not enough, remembers Nelson George.
Tuesday 30 April 2019

Jordan Peele on Us: “I knew I was gonna forge new ground in the pantheon of doppelganger tales”

Us, Jordan Peele’s horrifyingly entertaining follow-up to Get Out, is an allegorical portrait of the state of the Union, set in a sun-kissed California peopled with evil doppelgangers – an ingenious vision that offers a tantalising array of interpretations. He talks to Simran Hans.
Friday 22 March 2019

Us review: Jordan Peele raises the damned

Peele’s comic-horror follow-up to his hit Get Out makes hay with a scenario of our other half rising, writes Leigh Singer.
Friday 15 March 2019

Blackface, whitewashing and the grey zone – a two-part video inquiry

Who gets to play who on screen – and how? In this two-part video essay, Leigh Singer looks at Hollywood’s shifting but stubborn history of racial blacklisting and white privilege, then turns to the ongoing ambiguities of satire and power and today’s prevailing controversies of cultural elision and appropriation.
Friday 5 April 2019

A film in the moment: how Hale County This Morning, This Evening heightens our gaze

RaMell Ross’s poetically fragmented documentary offers an intimate view of a small African American community in Alabama, while proving that sometimes you can see the world differently just by sitting still and taking the time to look at it, writes Luke Moody.
Thursday 17 January 2019

If Beale Street Could Talk review: a thwarted romance in slow-motion

Barry Jenkins’s languorous follow-up to Moonlight is a lovingly observed story of two young people who come together in a hazy 1970s New York, before being torn apart by rough justice, writes Nick Pinkerton.
Thursday 7 February 2019

Film of the week: Sorry to Bother You is an unruly, outrageous corporate satire

The grasping racial politics of late-stage capitalism come under fire in Boots Riley’s wildly inventive comedy, starring Lakeith Stanfield as an office worker who gets too close to the truth, writes Adam Nayman.
Thursday 6 December 2018

James Baldwin and beyond: radical nights at the inaugural Smithsonian African American Film Festival

The opportunities for dialogue created by showing films from the African disapora in a grand Washington DC museum were very exciting, although there was little time to visit the exhibits between screenings, reports Matthew Barrington.
Friday 30 November 2018

Film of the week: Widows takes the heist thriller for a spectacular ride

Viola Davis leads a gang of novice female crooks in Steve McQueen’s slick and intelligent blockbuster, which has plenty to say for itself over the gunfire, writes Pamela Hutchinson.
Thursday 8 November 2018

If Beale Street Could Talk first look: Barry Jenkins consecrates James Baldwin’s race-crossed lovers

Barry Jenkins’s rhapsodic adaptation of James Baldwin’s Harlem passion story finds reasons to swoon in the darkness, writes Sophie Monks Kaufman.
Wednesday 19 September 2018

Widows first look: Steve McQueen steals the heist genre

Steve McQueen floors it with a perfectly proportioned, whip-smart heist thriller, not least showcasing the talents of boss widow Viola Davis and henchman Daniel Kaluuya, writes Simran Hans.
Monday 10 September 2018

BlacKkKlansman review: Spike Lee fails to get to the heart of racist America

Spike Lee recounts the true story of a black police officer who went undercover in the KKK in this sweeping, clumsy parable, more concerned with landing jokes than interrogating racial hatred, writes Kelli Weston.
Friday 24 August 2018

Wake work: how Spike Lee’s soulful documentaries explore personal and public grieving

The BlacKkKlansman director’s nonfiction films earnestly and cathartically portray black vulnerability, showing how those left behind take up the legacy of their dead, writes Kelli Weston. 
Friday 24 August 2018

Surreal16: the filmmaking collective trying to forge a new identity for Nigerian cinema

At the seventh annual Africa International Film Festival in Lagos, Tega Okiti speaks to the Surreal16 collective about their intention to create artistically minded films that move away from the reigning imperialism of Nollywood aesthetics and production practices.
Friday 17 August 2018

BlacKkKlansman first look: Spike Lee uncloaks America’s heart of darkness

Spike Lee’s raucous investigative satire of American white nationalism whoops up a true fairy tale of anti-racist swamp-draining – without obscuring the bigger picture of a bigotry that endures, says Sophie Monks Kaufman.
Thursday 17 May 2018

The unkindest cut of all: gay expression, indigenous cultural rights and the fight over The Wound (Inxeba)

A violent controversy over the award-winning South African film The Wound points to a tense global debate about the rights of indigenous peoples to protect their collective forms of cultural expression. Where does the defence of traditional culture become censorship, asks Bertrand Moullier.
Wednesday 25 April 2018

Film of the week: Sweet Country, a landmark Aboriginal western

Warwick Thornton upends The Searchers with this deftly shaded and powerful account of the hunting of an indigenous couple wanted for the murder of a white man in the 1920s Australian outback, writes Jason Anderson.
Monday 12 March 2018

Idrissa Ouédraogo obituary: Burkinabe master who merged the political and the poetic

The filmmaker from Burkina Faso, who has died aged 64, was a singular talent in African cinema whose films championed marginalised people, cultures and lands, writes Sanogo Aboubakar.
Monday 5 March 2018

Black Panther to the rescue?

Will Marvel’s new black superhero blockbuster prove a cultural watershed, or a corporate alibi, asks Kofo Owokoniran?
Thursday 22 February 2018

Black Panther review: an electrifying, Afrofuturist superhero movie

Ryan Coogler’s spectacular film diverges from one tradition while honouring another, in the process becoming a unusually poignant, political entry in the Marvel franchise, writes Kelli Weston.
Friday 16 February 2018

I Am Not Your Negro review: race, rage and the American Dream

Raoul Peck’s fluid documentary uses the timeless anger of James Baldwin to animate his history of the black experience in America, from Hollywood stereotypes to police brutality, writes Violet Lucca.
Monday 4 December 2017

Mudbound review: families at war on home soil

In Dee Rees’s mythic and superbly acted family saga set in the Mississippi Delta in the 1940s, two young men return from the front only to find bigotry and poverty tearing their community apart, writes Adam Nayman.
Wednesday 22 November 2017

African cinema: open your eyes

After years of detective work, 24 lost African classics are screening at film festivals around the UK. If you’re curious about film, there’s no excuse not to dive in, says Mark Cousins.
Friday 20 October 2017

Black Film, British Cinema 2017: from representation to radicalism

Questions about black identity and British culture that were raised in the 1980s seem just as urgent today, as a recent conference in London made clear, writes Simran Hans.
Saturday 22 July 2017

Daughters of the Dust review: a transportive, transformative colonial rites-of-passage movie

As Julie Dash’s rare masterpiece returns to cinemas as the centrepiece of Sight & Sound’s latest Deep Focus season Visions of the Black Feminine, here’s Lizzie Francke’s original review of this “balletic, operatic… elemental” film, from our September 1991 issue.
Friday 2 June 2017

The black feminine on screen: 11 key auteurs

From Daughters of the Dust to Lemonade, a distinctly interior, subjective aesthetic binds a number of films made by and about black women. Tega Okiti spotlights 11 of the varied individuals and collectives at the heart of this often marginalised cinematic tradition.
Saturday 17 June 2017

Rewind Fast Forward: Sandi Hughes’s radical film archive

By preserving images of black and gay life in and around Liverpool, Hughes has created a powerful archive of her own, and raw material for other filmmakers to refashion into revelatory new works, writes Grace Barber-Plentie.
Thursday 6 April 2017

Get Out review: a surreal satire of racial tension

Jordan Peele’s debut film is a brilliantly inventive horror that skewers the insecurities and injustices of modern America, says Trevor Johnston.
Thursday 16 March 2017

Film of the week: Moonlight, a prism of repression and desire, awash in poetry

Barry Jenkins’ three-ages portrait of a queer black youth comes bearing a weight of significance; but its nuanced ensemble performances and agile formalism give it a rare beauty and tenderness, writes Adam Nayman.
Thursday 16 February 2017

Mudbound review: days of hell in 1940s Mississippi

Dee Rees’s devastating adaptation of Hillary Jordan’s WWII-era saga of neighbouring black and white cotton-farming families finds humanity up to its neck in hardships both natural and self-inflicted, says Sophie Brown.
Thursday 26 January 2017

Burning illusions: the long road to Black British film stardom

To mark the Who We Are. takeover of the BFI’s online channels this week, we’re republishing a series of stories from our archives about Black British film past and present – starting with Ashley Clark’s 2016 look at the historical paucity of roles for Black actors in British films.
Wednesday 14 December 2016

Lemonade review: Beyoncé’s tribute to black female artists

In the iconic singer’s visual album, marital infidelity prompts a retreat to a poeticised world of women in the American South, where she rewrites traumas of black history, finds Kelli Weston.
Thursday 8 December 2016

FiSahara: the world’s only film festival in a refugee camp

At one of the world’s most remote film festivals, cinema is still a fledgling medium, but it is already being put into use as a weapon of resistance. Can film really save the Sahrawis, asks Alex Dudok de Wit?
Tuesday 22 November 2016

Cleverman: an Aboriginal sci-fi TV drama that delivers a thrilling cry for solidarity

Thought-provoking Australian TV drama Cleverman reflects a nation divided along racial lines, but will resonate beyond its home soil. Its mixture of mythology, violence and political critique makes it essential viewing in an age of surveillance and institutional prejudice, says Sophie Mayer.
Tuesday 18 October 2016

“Please stop this talent drain”: David Oyelowo’s plea for British film diversity

The now-expat star of Selma and A United Kingdom demanded changes at the top to redress the systemic whitewashing of British histories on screen in a heartfelt keynote speech at the London Film Festival’s Black Star symposium. Simran Hans reports.
Tuesday 18 October 2016

The 13th review: Ava DuVernay shines a light on America’s slavery loophole

America’s swollen prison population is a great place to find captive labour. Ava DuVernay’s documentary brings this spectre of slavery out of the closet, says Fanta Sylla.
Thursday 13 October 2016

Moonlight first-look review: masculinity, differently

Barry Jenkins’ deft, affecting drama shades three steps of growth and connection in a quiet Miami boy’s journey to manhood, says Simran Hans.
Tuesday 13 September 2016

A United Kingdom – first look

Simran Hans on Amma Asante’s retelling of the post-war, inter-continental love story between Seretse Khama and Ruth Williams, a refresh of the woman’s picture that again confronts skeletons of Britain’s colonial past.
Monday 12 September 2016

Film of the week: The Hard Stop

Before Mark Duggan’s death, and after: Ros Cranston on a stylish and potent inside view of the lives around the man whose killing triggered the 2011 England riots.
Thursday 14 July 2016

Film of the week: Creed

Ryan Coogler and Michael B. Jordan put the franchise back on its feet, finds Jason Anderson.
Friday 15 January 2016

Back to black: the 101-year making of the oldest black American-starring feature

Ashley Clark on how 1913’s Bert Williams Lime Kiln Club Field Day finally got its field day.
Thursday 18 December 2014

Breaking your reservation: the rise of indigenous cinema

This century’s first-nations filmmakers have learnt to take the movies into their own hands. Now will the dominant culture sit up and look?
Wednesday 10 June 2015

Film of the week: Timbuktu

Islamism’s martinets come to town in Abderrahmane Sissako’s acute, slow-burn modern tragedy, says Nick Pinkerton.
Thursday 28 May 2015

Archives online: Chapel Hill, N.C. plays itself

See 1939 black North Carolinians as they saw themselves! Thirza Wakefield probes the faces filmed by H. Lee Waters, the Mitchell and Kenyon of his time and place.
Tuesday 7 July 2015

I turn my back on you: black movie poster art

Isabel Stevens on black film posters that both succumbed to and defied racism.
Sunday 22 February 2015

Go tell it in the fog: James Baldwin in San Francisco, 1963

For our archives online column, Thirza Wakefield uncovers a public TV documentary that records (and decries) the state of racism in San Francisco, 1963, with James Baldwin and more.
Sunday 15 February 2015

Selma review: Martin Luther King leads his marchers onward

Ava DuVernay’s dramatisation of Martin Luther King’s leadership of the Civil Rights marches that overcame American voting discrimination speaks powerfully to the present, says Ashley Clark.
Thursday 5 February 2015

“It was a knockout”: seven filmmakers and writers on Do the Right Thing

Spike Lee’s angry snapshot of racial tensions reaching boiling point in a New York City neighbourhood still resonates. Ashley Clark re-introduces the film, while key figures from the film world explain its hold on their imaginations.
Thursday 1 August 2019

Come back, South Africa: Africa in Motion 2014

Three recent documentaries about the birth and growing pains of post-apartheid South Africa epitomised the reflective mood at this year’s Scottish showcase of African cinema. Harriet Warman reports.
Friday 5 December 2014

Film of the week: Concerning Violence

Göran Hugo Olsson builds on The Black Power Mixtape with a richly dialectical archive essay intertwining Frantz Fanon’s writings on colonial violence and two decades of African liberation struggles. Ashley Clark looks on admiringly.
Thursday 27 November 2014

The art of reckoning: Alex Gibney on Finding Fela

The director of a new documentary about Nigerian musical and political radical Fela Kuti talks about people and power with Ashley Clark.
Tuesday 9 September 2014

Film of the week: Finding Fela

Alex Gibney revisits the body and many faces of Fela Kuti, Afrobeat revolutionary extraordinaire. By Sam Davies.
Friday 5 September 2014

The art of decolonising: postcolonial cinema at AV Festival 2014

Michael Pattison encounters a range of attitudes to the sins of the past underlying a melee of artistic approaches.
Wednesday 19 March 2014

American refugees: Bill Morrison’s The Great Flood

Bill Morrison, expert aesthetician of decay and disappearance, turns his attention to the forgotten flood that devastated interwar America. By Sukhdev Sandhu.
Wednesday 19 March 2014

Back to black: the 101-year making of the oldest black American-starring feature

Ashley Clark on how 1913’s Bert Williams Lime Kiln Club Field Day finally got its field day.
Thursday 18 December 2014

Film of the week: Belle

Amma Asante’s portrait of the eighteenth-century mixed-race noblewoman Dido Belle reconstructs the costume drama on the twin pillars of love and justice, says Sophie Mayer.
Thursday 12 June 2014

Film of the week: Fruitvale Station

Ashley Clark admires writer-director Ryan Coogler’s calmy compassionate reconstruction of a day in the life and death of Oscar Grant, a black urban everyman and victim of police racism.
Friday 6 June 2014

Colonial visions: Concerning Violence and N – The Madness of Reason

Africa’s subjugated pasts are far from past in two new films in this year’s festival, reports Ashley Clark.
Wednesday 12 February 2014

An Oversimplification of Her Beauty review

Ashley Clark is bowled over by a dazzling, deliquescent, take-this-heart love movie.
Friday 7 February 2014

Alien abductions: 12 Years a Slave and the past as science fiction

Steve McQueen’s correctional slavery drama is only the most astringently literal of a handful of post-1960s films that show us the dystopian strangeness of true history, says Ashley Clark.
Wednesday 15 January 2014

The Stuart Hall Project review: a vital portrait of a thinker and his times

Cultural critic and New Left fountainhead Stuart Hall meets the mood music of Miles Davis and the reflective screen poetry of John Akomfrah in this multifaceted documentary, writes Ashley Clark.
Thursday 5 September 2013

Spike Lee: Oldboy, new man?

Spike Lee’s remake of Old Boy might not have set the world on fire, but his lively engagement with digital media points to a bright future, says Ashley Clark
Friday 13 December 2013

Expiry and its discontents: Let the Fire Burn and How to Survive a Plague

Two new ‘archival verité’ movies find creative ways to offset documentary cinema’s reality problem. By Robert Greene.
Thursday 24 October 2013

Penny Woolcock talks to gangsters

The director of Birmingham gang-peace documentary One Mile Away talks outsider empathy, police harassment and social-enterprise DVD giveaways with Ashley Clark.
Friday 29 March 2013

Return of the natives

The 2013 Berlinale’s Journey into Indigenous Cinema strand found common ground (and tone) from Canada to New Zealand, reports Ashley Clark.
Thursday 14 February 2013

Lost and found: Chameleon Street

Wendell B. Harris’s Chameleon Street is a gloriously strange one-off that deserves to be enjoyed by a new generation, says Ashley Clark.
Thursday 31 January 2013

Lost and found: Chameleon Street

Wendell B. Harris’s Chameleon Street is a gloriously strange one-off that deserves to be enjoyed by a new generation, says Ashley Clark.
Thursday 31 January 2013

New Nigerian cinema and beyond: Film Africa 2012

Ashley Clark roams the continent’s latest comedies, dramas and documentaries in this burgeoning London showcase.
Thursday 6 December 2012

London 2012: African round-up

Three new daring – or debate-worthy – dramas from sub-Saharan Africa loom large on Basia Lewandowska Cummings’ festival card.
Wednesday 24 October 2012

John Akomfrah’s Hauntologies

The Nine Muses director continues his odyssey into the presence of the past in this mesmerising installation tapestry of hand-me-down films, photographs, paintings and more, finds Laura Allsop.
Thursday 25 October 2012

The dead zone? Superpower – Africa in Science Fiction review

Settling into the best movie works in this uneven gallery group show, Mark Sinker pines for the focus of the cinema screen.
Thursday 28 June 2012

The battle of Chicago: The Spook Who Sat by the Door

The Spook Who Sat by the Door might long have been recognised as one of the great African-American calls to arms – had it not been suppressed by the FBI, says David Somerset.
Wednesday 23 May 2012

The land still lies: Handsworth Songs and the English riots

Mark Fisher reflects on a screening of Handsworth Songs, the Black Audio Film Collective’s 1986 essay on black Britain, in the wake of this summer’s new wave of civil unrest.
Tuesday 27 September 2011

Fight for rights, will to power: The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975

Greg Tate on the shifting struggles for black equality – and identity – showcased in a documentary montage of found footage from the Swedish TV archives.
Thursday 27 October 2011