By Nigel D'Souza
When blacks rose against their oppression in Britain in the '80s, the images on newsreel and documentaries confirmed or constructed images in the popular imagination of blacks and their place in British society.
Out of the fire emerged the Black Audio Film Collective (BAFC). Lina Gopaul, one of the six founding members, says they owe a lot to the uprisings of the '80s. The group had been involved in anti-racist activities, which led to their interest in black film from the US and the Third World.
A coincidence of events resulted in the establishment on a financial footing of a number of black independent film groups, among them the BAFC.
Independent film makers who consciously avoided the methods and techniques of the mainstream cinema were organised in "workshops" which had organic links with community groups like trade unions, feminist organisations and anti-racist groups. The setting up of Channel 4 assured them of greater financial security and a ready outlet for their work in the mainstream. The film union, through the "Workshop Declaration" of 1981, gave its members "permission to work within certain specified limits in the way they chose". Finally, the "red" Greater London Council had a funding program for black ethnic minorities which enabled the flourishing of all sorts of community groups, including film making.
Lina Gopaul is black, British and political. Politics is inseparable from the BAFC. It is struggling politically to establish room for cultural expression — for the right of blacks, Indians, Afro-Caribbeans, Pakistanis to be British in their own way.
The collective has produced six major films and documentaries in its nine years. It is also involved in media consultancy, giving seminars on race and representation, film programming and film familiarisation. One of the main aims has been creating the space for other blacks to express themselves through film.
Of their most famous film, Handsworth Songs, Lina Gopaul says, "When the riots took place in '85 particularly, the media just rushed in and gave a running commentary by noting times and immediate events that led to the violence. We wanted to put the riots into a social and political history of our experiences and our people's experiences. That was central to the project of Handsworth Songs.
"That made us think about perspective and form, which in the past have been used to stitch us up. To construct images of ourselves, we had to challenge the form and structure of film making, to come up with something new."
Gopaul says that even technical things like the lights that are used, the film stock and contrasts had to be reassessed when filming black people.
Criticising racist forms and structures in film making demands of the black film makers their own form of representation. Gopaul: "If you do see that you are living in a racist society and its forms and structures are racist, how do you try to represent yourself? What are you left with? That was the challenge."
The BAFC is not interested in traditional "BBC" journalistic, or as she calls it, "tell-it-like-it-is" documentaries. Theirs is a search for a new aesthetic that recognises the diversity and cultural specificity of the individual experiences of blacks in Britain — a method that is important in breaking down the external, mainly white, constructions of black identity in the arts and elsewhere.
They also seek out the works of black and Third World film makers in their search for conceptually and structurally challenging film. This has led to revivals of early Indian films in recent film festivals in Britain.
Despite having received recognition and prizes for most of their films, in Britain and internationally, the BAFC — and other black and independent film makers — face a threatening future.
The Tory government, since dismantling the GLC, is attempting to dismantle other agreements and structures that do not have a place within its economic rationalist outlook on life. The Workshop Declaration is under threat, and the Channel 4 agreement with the BAFC ends very soon, to be replaced by a contract system on a production basis.
Gopaul says, "We will have to do other things to survive. We have to reorganise ourselves once our funding has been taken away. The economic rationalist argument doesn't recognise culture as of economic value.
"There will have to be a mixed economy for us, and we will have to try to force institutions like the BBC (who have been instructed to take in 25% of their programs from external sources by 1992) to take in black film makers or to commission black film workshops. We will not have the luxury of making the films we want."
Despite the dark clouds, Gopaul says they have created space for black film and film makers. "We have tried to create opportunity to open those doors and try to keep them open, not just for ourselves, but so that the next generation of [black] film makers doesn't have to reinvent the wheel and justify itself over and over again. The difference between then and now is just immense. You do have young black film makers who can actually look at the whole body of works and study something and engage with the work we have done."