neither/nor
10
more input into police policymaking and that police tactics should be more compassionate. In the aftermath of the unrest, some ground began to shift, particularly in the cultural sector. As observed by the historian and writer Kobena Mercer, following Scarman, political expediency, or optics, was a key driver for the ‘benevolent’ gestures of many public institutions, who hastily apportioned funding to black-focused projects. The unrest resonated as an expression of protest against the deep-rooted marginalization of black voices within all aspects of society, and as such represented demand for a black presence within public institutions as a minimum requirement. Culturally, this demand generated a broad, cross-arts flowering of black creative practice2, a boom which fortuitously coincided with the birth of the independent terrestrial TV station Channel 43, a new platform—in 1982, Britain had only three TV channels—which would prove crucial for marginalized filmmakers4 and audiences alike. One key development of the era was the landmark ACTT Declaration of 1984. The Independent Filmmakers’ Association, founded in 1974 and composed of artists, students and filmmakers, had been pressuring the BFI (British Film Institute) and ACTT (Association of Cinematograph, Television and Allied
chimeric cinema, black audio film collective 1980s-1990s
Technicians, the main broadcast union, which at the time had vast industry bargaining power) for years to make exceptions to union rules and provide financial security and thus breathing space for the independent sector. Channel 4’s presence as a guaranteed home for new independent content proved a crucial turning point in negotiations, and the ensuing legislation helped many groups working on politically and socially engaged filmmaking, including Ceddo, Sankofa Film and Video Collective (featuring Isaac Julien) and the allAsian group Retake, to both consolidate their activities and provide opportunities for others through funded outreach and training schemes. Another group who benefited from the declaration went by a stately, unambiguous and memorable moniker: Black Audio Film Collective (BAFC). There had been glimmers of independent black British film crafted in a largely realist mode in the 1960s and 70s by the pioneering likes of Horace Ove and Lloyd Reckord. But it is fair to say that British moving image culture had seen nothing quite like BAFC when it burst onto the scene in 1982. Having joined forces at Portsmouth Polytechnic5, before relocating to a studio space in Hackney, East London, this group of seven multimedia artists and thinkers ( John Akomfrah,
Including the Black British Arts Movement, founded around the time of the First National Black Art Convention organised by the Blk Art Group and held at Wolverhampton Polytechnic. Their work was both inspired and promoted by the cultural theorist Stuart Hall. 2
Per Mark Duguid, writing for BFI’s Screenonline, “Channel 4 … was in part a compromise between the demand for competitive expansion in broadcasting (with a new market for advertising), and the presumed virtues of the BBC’s public service ethos. Added to this was a desire—in keeping with the early Thatcher Government’s objective to deregulate markets and encourage entrepreneurship—to allow new space for independent producers previously stuck on the margins of British television.” 3
It is worth making the point, particularly in a chimera-forward context like True/False, that the boundaries between what constitutes film or television in Britain has always been blurred, given the central role of institutions like BBC and Channel 4 in the production, distribution and exhibition of moving image content. Moreover, exhibition opportunities for black filmmakers have been so limited historically that it seems churlish to impose stringent categorical restrictions here. 4