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Wright, Jonathan (2004) Black identity and the representational politics of 'Black/British independent cinema'. Doctoral thesis, London Metropolitan University.
This thesis examines the construction of black identity in black films produced in Britain from the early 1980s to the mid 1990s. It explores the ways in which black cinema tries to represent black identity in ways that challenge images found in mainstream cinema. These films draw on postcolonial ways of thinking. Black cinema attempts to show that black communities are complex and heterogeneous. This position disrupts colonial ideas about 'race'. However, 'race' is constructed in these films as a paradox. Black cinema reflects the way 'race' is a material idea, in the sense that black people are a concrete, social group with social and economic experiences that are grounded in a history, and that 'race' is an abstract idea, in the sense that being 'black' means different things in a variety of contexts.
Some black films try to reconcile this incongruity by representing the world using realist film conventions. Realism represents 'race' as a material concept through its history. However, this approach often reconstitutes blackness in a way that is informed by colonial stereotypes. Other black films approach the paradox of 'race' using anti-realist film. Anti-realism displaces colonial notions with the idea that identity is always changing and fluid and cannot be fixed by a specific set of ideas. However, this form of representation does not reflect the way 'race' is shaped by a material history that informs the ways in which black communities understand themselves in the world.
This thesis examines how black cinema in Britain attempts to find a space where black film can successfully represent 'race' as a fluid concept and as a stable product of history, but without reproducing colonial, racist images of blackness.
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