Image, Music, Power: Julian Henriques and Parminder Vir's Work in Film and Television Event 4
When:
—
Venue:
Birkbeck 43 Gordon Square
Event 4: 1st November
Screening of On Duty (1984) and panel discussion with Cassie McFarlane, Julian Henriques, Michael McMillan and Parminder Vir.
This retrospective closes with a special screening of On Duty (1984), marking its fortieth anniversary. This drama-documentary about Rita Maxim’s ongoing struggle with the management at St Mary’s Hospital in northwest London. Maxim, a Caribbean NHS worker, refused to sign the new privatisation contract imposed by the hospital management and was subsequently dismissed. This incident was secretly recorded and included in the film. On Duty was also able to capture the collective support among the hospital’s Black health workers, who were fearful of losing their jobs if they didn’t sign the privatisation contract. Made for Channel 4’s Eleventh Hour Series, this film was directed by Cassie McFarlane, produced by Julian Henriques, with a cast that included Pearl Wilson, Michael Hamilton, Sylvester Williams, Yvonne Weeks, and Lyn Langridge. On Duty was originally a play, written by Michael McMillan and directed by Michael Hamilton. It was first performed at the Carlton Community Centre, northwest London, in 1983, and subsequently toured to various community-based venues across London.
Notes
Spanning musical, documentary, agit-prop and essay film, this retrospective looks at some of Professor Julian Henriques and Parminder Vir OBE’s work as directors and producers in film and television over several decades. The programme has been developed with the intention not only of screening a series of important works but also of considering the conditions of possibility, the political, social and aesthetic connections, that make movements and moments possible. The screenings and discussions should appeal to the younger generation looking for inspiration from the film history they’ve inherited as well as those who were there at the time.
The 1980s fundamentally transformed British film and television, witnessing the launch of Channel 4 (1982) and the emergence of an independent Black British cinema. As this series attests, Henriques and Vir were active in both. In 1987, they established the production company Formation Films and made Exit No Exit, a thirty-minute Orpheus-inspired dance drama set in the London Underground, directed by Henriques for Dance on Four. Previously, Henriques produced another work for Channel 4 which is included in this retrospective and celebrates its 40th anniversary this year: On Duty (1984). Directed by Cassie McFarlane and adapted from the play by Michael McMillan, this drama-documentary about the true story of Rita Maxim, a Caribbean NHS worker, who fought the management of St Mary’s Hospital and refused to sign the new privatisation contract they attempted to impose.
In the early 1980s, Vir worked at the Commonwealth Institute and, together with Jim Pines, co-organised the Black Film Festival at the Commonwealth Institute in London in 1982. She then began working at Greater London Council (GLC) and, as Imruh Bakari has recently noted, convened the Third Eye: London’s Festival of Third World Cinema (1983) collaborating with others including June Givanni and Lionel Ngakane. As the GLC Ethnic Arts Officer (1982-1986), Vir developed the policy for funding the Black film and video sector, an initiative that paved the way for funding important workshops in London, including Black Audio Film Collective, Sankofa Film and Video, Ceddo Film and Video Workshop, and Retake Film and Video Collective, as well as independent production companies like Kuumba Productions and Penumbra Productions. These crucial events and initiatives have led to a revolutionary body of work and discourse that artists, curators and scholars continue to grapple with today. In 1986, Vir presented a showreel of Black and Asian filmmakers to the editorial staff in the BBC, where she would be employed, eventually as series producer, until 1994, working with many important filmmakers from across the globe, including Deepa Dhanraj, Gaston Kaboré, Michel Khleifi and Raoul Peck.
During the 1990s, Vir also produced numerous documentaries, including Algeria: Woman at War (1992), a work that combines archival footage and interviews to address the crucial role Algerian women played in their country’s liberation struggle from the French and their equally important place in political life at the time of the work’s making. In this retrospective, the film will be screened alongside Professor Manthia Diawara’s reflexive essay film Rouch in Reverse (1995). In this latter work, for which Henriques and Vir were executive producer and producer respectively, Diawara offers a nuanced and critical account of Jean Rouch, often described as the ‘father of ethnographic cinema’ and precursor to the French New Wave.
Henriques two most widely seen films, We the Ragamuffin (1992) and Babymother (1998), focus on the dancehall scenes in Peckham and Harlesden respectively. During this time, Henriques also made Derek Walcott: Poet of the Island (1993) for BBC Arena, a documentary presented by Hall and featuring a wide-ranging and probing interview with the Saint Lucian poet, playwright and Nobel Laureate. The retrospective also features two recent works by Henriques, a documentary about the artist Denzil Forrester titled Denzil’s Dance (2019), and a short documentary from a much larger series that is part of Henriques’ ongoing research project, funded by the European Research Council, investigating sound systems and other street technologies around the globe. While the music scenes documented in We the Ragamuffin and Babymother seem at a historical distance in 2024, it is clear that the deep engagement with sound systems, whose influence continues to reverberate around the world, is being continued by Henriques today as professor in the Media, Communications and Cultural Studies Department at Goldsmiths, University of London. No event could testify to that more than Jah Shaka’s Nine Night, convened by Henriques at the Great Hall of Goldsmiths, on 21st April 2023.
Curated by Oliver Fuke.
Contact name:
Matthew Barrington