08.01.25, 20:30, Pressure (1976)

Pressure is the first feature-length film usually placed under the heading of Black-British cinema. Directed by artistic jack-of-all-trades Horace Ové, the film gives voice to the windrush generation of Afro-European diaspora trying to make a life in harsh conditions in a hostile UK. Young Tony is a teenager with Trinidadian roots trying to navigate the network of everyday inequality. Although his passport labels him an English citizen, it is clear that Tony and his peers are second-class citizens. A situation that becomes increasingly untenable and — the longer, the more — turns into resistance. Pressure is a raw and sprightly piece of cinéma-vérité that broke with the myths of the British integration policy of the time. Almost half a century after its release, this cinematic punch has only gained momentum.

Our guest speaker on duty revisits the film as an expression of diasporic countercinema. More a mode of filmmaking than a genre in its own right, this kind of cinema links itself to the political commitment to translate the living conditions of migrated communities to the screen. In the process, filmmakers like Ové retool and hijack the conventions of their guest cinema and put their own, intimate-personal spin on it.

This film will be introduced by film scholar Alexander De Man.