MENELIK SHABAZZ - A TRUE PIONEER IN BLACK BRITISH FILM 1954 - 2021

We often talk about the “Windrush generation” as paving the way for the modern Black presence in the UK. As important as this generation is I believe there is an equally important generation, and that is the first generation of Black Britons. This is the first generation that was either born in the UK or came over here at such an early age that Britain was the only place they ever really knew as home.

While immigrants invariably fight discrimination and hardship it is often not until the next generation call a place “home”, because they literally have no alternative, that the fight for true equality goes to the next level.

This generation is no longer the Caribbeans with a “grip (suitcase) on top of the cupboard” because they constantly had one eye on going back home.

This is the generation that not only fought to end racism but demanded equality - because if you cannot be equal in your own home, where can you be an equal?

This is the generation that truly started to forge what it meant to be "Black British" as opposed to Caribbean living in the UK.

This is the generation that created the foundations of Black British culture from Lovers Rock in the 1970s, to Soul II Soul in the 1980s.

And this week we lost a giant of this generation who shaped Black British film and culture.

Menelik Shabazz was born in Barbados in 1954 and came to the UK at the age of six. In 1974 he enrolled at the London International Film School, two years before "Pressure", the first film by a Black British director, was released.

He was a pioneer in recognising the importance of the first generation of modern Black Britons who truly called the UK home. In 1976 he directed Step Forward Youth, a 30-minute documentary about London-born Black youths. And in 1978 he directed Breaking Point which tackled the issue of systemic criminalisation of Black British youth and the police use of the “sus law” (a version of today’s “stop and search”).

Shabazz however is probably best known for his first feature-length film “Burning an Illusion” about a Black British woman in London, again focusing on the first generation of Black British people born in the UK. The film won the Grand Prix at the Amiens International Film Festival in France, and in 2011 it was honoured with a Screen Nation Classic Film Award.

The importance of the Black British community ran through his life, and not just his films, as he co-founded Kuumba Productions to provide an outlet for independent film projects in 1982.

In 1984 he went on to co-found Ceddo, a seminal Black British film collective. It was at Ceddo that I had the privilege of first meeting Menelik as I worked as an intern on his docu-drama "Time and Judgement", telling the history of the struggles of the Black community across the world through the use of newsreel footage. I was far from the only young Black person Ceddo gave pivotal training to, and I would not be working in the media industry today without the foundation they provided for me.

In Ceddo Shabazz clearly placed the Black British experience within a global context, as the film collective covered subject matters such as Rastafari women in Jamaica, with the film “Omega Rising", and the struggle against apartheid in “We Are the Elephant”.

Shabazz continued his groundbreaking work of framing Black British film in an international context as he launched the Black Filmmaker Magazine (BFM) in 1998, the first Black film publication aimed at the global Black filmmaking industry.

Menelik Shabbaz was a pioneer who saw the importance in shaping and capturing the narratives of the Black British experience, and was one of the first people to recognise its importance first to Britain and then globally.

He was an inspiration to me and will be sorely missed by every Black British person working in film.

What the Privatisation of Channel 4 Would Mean for Media Diversity

In 2001 President George Bush famously addressed Congress, just ten days after the 9/11 attacks on the Twin Towers, and said 'You are either with us, or with the terrorists'. It was an oversimplification of geopolitics that with hindsight proved to be incredibly harmful - the consequences of which we are still untangling.

Complexity and difficult political decisions are rarely well served by reducing them to simple binaries.

Similarly when it comes to the UK’s complex media landscape I am tired of simple binaries.

In recent weeks all too often debates around the future of institutions such as the BBC, Channel 4, and even Ofcom, seem to boil down to either “support the status quo” or “support a radical transformation” (with right-wing, free market, political overtones).

Let’s be honest, for almost a decade I have been campaigning to change the status quo, from advocating for ring-fenced funds for diverse productions, to changing the structure of the media regulator Ofcom, to even overhauling the tax system surrounding film and television productions. 

And this is because the piecemeal policies that are all too often rolled out by the media industry have not been good enough. In terms of ethnic diversity there has been no significant progress once you factor in wider demographic changes in the general population.

Disability representation, both in front and behind the camera, still bumps along the bottom.  

Women are still massively underrepresented in key roles such as directing.

And, I haven’t even started to discuss intersectionality. 

There are good reasons why I am no fan of the status quo.

At the same time I recognise that invariably improvements to diversity and inclusion in the media industry have been due to deliberate and better regulation, not less.  The biggest advances in regional diversity for example have  been due to better definitions of “Out of London” imposed on them by the media regulator. And it is no coincidence that arguably the most impactful policy responses to the summer of Black Lives Matter protests came from the two most regulated and publicly accountable broadcasters; BBC and Channel 4.

I see real dangers to media diversity and inclusion if less public money is put into public service broadcasting - here I’m obviously thinking about the BBC. 

And I also see real dangers to media diversity and inclusion if broadcasters are more accountable to shareholders and driven by the profit motive than to creating a public good for the whole nation - here I am obviously thinking about the current privatisation debate swirling around Channel 4.

As a Black man I am all too sensitive of a history in which my community’s support is used to see off the worst excesses of policies that might harm us, but the remaining status quo is not changed as a result to help us either.

In the latest media storm I personally oppose calls for the privatisation of Channel 4 as I worry this will, over time, reduce regulatory oversight, and the channel’s management will be more concerned about increasing returns to shareholders than increasing programming for underserved audiences. But neither do I find common cause with the people opposing privatisation unless they can show me how they will change the status quo and find common cause with people from underrepresented groups to increase representation, diversity, inclusion and equity. 

(This blog post reflects my personal opinion and do not necessarily reflect any organisation I work with)