You might be missing the Mangrove Nine or the Brixton Uprising from your history lessons, but Steve McQueen’s new film series will make sure you learn up.
Small Axe is a collection of five films from the British director about London’s Black community between the late 1960s and mid-1980s, which particularly focuses on the experiences of the British Caribbean community, the prevalence of systemic racism and police brutality, and those who mustered the power of collective action to demand change.
McQueen’s series comes at the end of a year which has seen the Black Lives Matter movement dominating headlines and conversation and thousands hitting the streets across America and cities around the globe demanding justice following the police killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and many other Black people at the hands of officers. These protests included cities across the UK, where systemic racism and police violence also has a long history, with strong anti-racist movements emerging in London in the ’60s, ’70s, and ’80s — something Small Axe brings to light.
When this year’s Cannes Film Festival selected two of the five films, Mangrove and Lovers Rock, McQueen dedicated both “to George Floyd and all the other Black people that have been murdered, seen or unseen, because of who they are in the U.S., UK and elsewhere.” The films may be set in the ’60s, ’70s, and ’80s, but the director said in a press statement, “Although they are about the past, they are very much concerned with the present. A commentary on where we were, where we are, and where we want to go.”
“To me, it is a love letter to Black resilience.”
More than anything else, these films tell important personal stories about a community standing up to immense systemic oppression, despite the odds. “The anthology, anchored in the West Indian experience in London, is a celebration of all that that community has succeeded in achieving against the odds,” said McQueen. “To me, it is a love letter to Black resilience, triumph, hope, music, joy and love as well as to friendship and family. Oh, and let’s not forget about food too!
“I recall each of these stories being told to me either by my parents, my aunt, and by experiencing racial discrimination myself growing up in the ’70s and ’80s. These are all our stories. I feel personally touched by each and every one of them.”
If you’re in the UK, Small Axe is rolling out on BBC One and BBC iPlayer on Sundays from Nov. 15 through to Dec. 13, and if you’re in the U.S., you can watch on Amazon Prime weekly too. Here’s a brief rundown on each film and a link to where you can watch it, because you absolutely should.
Mangrove
Malachi Kirby plays activist Darcus Howe in “Mangrove.”
Image: BBC
Since opening in 1968, Frank Crichlow’s West Indian restaurant Mangrove in Notting Hill became a community haven of Caribbean food, soul music, and political discussion for the Black community amid systemic racism and unchecked police brutality in London. Notting Hill was one area of London home to many people from Caribbean Commonwealth countries like Jamaica, Trinidad, and other islands who arrived in the UK from 1948 to 1971, referred to as the Windrush generation, named for one of the passenger ships.
Like many other Black-owned businesses at the time, the Mangrove became a target for relentless, destructive, unnecessary police raids. After continued police harassment, the local Black community staged a peaceful protest in 1970. Police violently reacted, wrongly arresting nine men and women, known historically as the Mangrove Nine, and charging them with incitement to riot. The ensuing trial at the Old Bailey (a court reserved for serious criminal offences) gained widespread publicity at the time, then became relatively forgotten. But McQueen’s film makes sure you don’t.
“This is a story that I grew up knowing through my parents, my dad was friends with one of the Mangrove Nine,” said McQueen. “It was crucial to me that my co-writer Alastair Siddons and I put all our effort into research and to retelling this story with as much accuracy and care as possible.”
Premiered at this year’s BFI London Film Festival as the event’s opening film, Mangrove is, for the most part, a compelling, infuriating, and highly important courtroom drama. The film spends a significant portion of its runtime on the trial itself but also foregrounds the role the Mangrove restaurant played in providing a safe space for Notting Hill’s Caribbean community of activists, artists, intellectuals, and friends. Lost in Space‘s Shaun Parkes is excellent as activist and restaurant owner Crichlow, Curfew‘s Malachi Kirby is powerful as activist Darcus Howe, and Black Panther‘s Letitia Wright is truly spectacular as 1970s leader of the British Black Panther movement Altheia Jones-LeCointe.
How to watch: Available to stream now on BBC iPlayer in the UK and on Amazon Prime in the U.S.
Lovers Rock
Patty (Shaniqua Okwok) and Martha (Amarah-Jae St Aubyn) in “Lovers Rock.”
Image: BBC
The romantic British reggae sub-genre known as lovers rock lends its name to the title of the second film in the Small Axe series. The only fictional tale in the series, Lovers Rock is a tribute to jubilant house parties thrown in England by the Black community in the ’80s, when they were met with racist hostility in white nightclubs. And it wasn’t just London. “For the first generation of Caribbean expats in Manchester, the home was the focal point,” writes journalist Kemi Alemoru in an essay for gal-dem editor-in-chief Charlie Brinkhurst Cuff’s anthology Mother Country: Real Stories of the Windrush Children, “not just for family life, but also for nightlife, due to the hostile atmosphere of some of the bars in the city. It was where they felt most comfortable.”
Lovers Rock mostly takes place over one such blues party in London’s Ladbroke Grove in 1980, and follows a young romance simmering on the dancefloor. “Lovers Rock sits apart from its Small Axe siblings in that it does not tell a true story of a person or group of individuals taking on the system, but is rather a collective reimagining of a time and place very precious to West Indian Londoners,” said executive producer Tracey Scoffield in a press statement.
“A collective reimagining of a time and place very precious to West Indian Londoners.”
“These house parties where the house owners would clear their rooms of furniture and bring in a sound system — large, often home-made speakers together with the crew who would play the music — the DJ, who spoke to the crowd, and the Selector, the one who chose the music. Word would get around the neighborhood and party-goers would pay an entrance fee. For the older West Indian community Lovers Rock will bring back many happy memories and I hope it inspires a new incarnation of Blues from younger audiences.”
Lovers Rock stars newcomer Amarah-Jae St. Aubyn alongside Top Boy‘s Micheal Ward, Sex Education‘s Kedar Williams-Stirling, and Boys‘ Shaniqua Okwok. Needless to say, the soundtrack is a character itself, including a particularly notable scene featuring Janet Kay’s 1979 single “Silly Games.”
How to watch: Available to stream now on BBC iPlayer in the UK and on Amazon Prime in the U.S.
Red, White and Blue
John Boyega plays Leroy Logan in “Red, White and Blue.”
Image: BBC
It’s been an enormous year for John Boyega, calling out racist ads, publicly criticising Disney for his Star Wars experience, and whose emotional speech during a Black Lives Matter protest in London remains one of 2020’s most powerful moments. The British actor leads the third instalment of Small Axe, which follows the true story of Leroy Logan, a forensic scientist whose father was assaulted by police, prompting him to become a constable in the Metropolitan Police Force. With the ultimate goal of changing the system from the inside, Logan faced unchecked racism within the institution, but also criticism from his father for joining the force responsible for his assault.
Logan risked everything to challenge the system, and went on to become a superintendent in the Met, the first chair of the National Black Police Association, and a published author. Today, Logan remains a vocal critic of systemic racism in the police force. “When I observe Met policing today, the look and feel of it is similar to the organisation I was part of back in the 1990s,” Logan wrote in the Guardian in October. “That’s before the 1999 Macpherson inquiry, which uncovered institutional racism and which was supposed to have sparked an overhaul in how the Met and other constabularies were run. Back then, policing across the country had no independent oversight, and no one with the power to make it become more reflective of the community it served.”
How to watch: Available Nov. 29 on BBC One and BBC iPlayer in the UK, and on Amazon Prime in the U.S.
Alex Wheatle
Sheyi Cole takes on the role of author Alex Wheatle.
Image: BBC
In another true story, Alex Wheatle sees actor Sheyi Coyle take on the eponymous award-winning British author, who was arrested and jailed as a teenager during the Brixton Uprising or Brixton Riots in 1981, a three-day confrontation between police and the Black community due to rising tension from police brutality and blatant targeting, as well as structurally racist unemployment levels. According to the Black Cultural Archives, unemployment in Brixton at the time was at 13 percent, disproportionately affecting Black people — 50 percent of young Black men were unemployed.
“For us who experienced it, we saw it as standing up to a racist police force,” Wheatle told the BBC in 2019. “After these events, we believe that finally society began to start listening to us and to our concerns. For the first time, Black people like myself became leaders of councils, politicians, and community activists. I believe that these riots sent a stern message to government, telling them that they can no longer treat diverse communities so badly.”
Written by McQueen and Alastair Siddons, Alex Wheatle charts his childhood years growing up in a white institutional care home and eventually finding community in the London suburb of Brixton as a teen through music and DJing, amid these blatantly racist economic discrepancies.
How to watch: Available Dec. 6 on BBC One and BBC iPlayer in the UK, and on Amazon Prime in the U.S.
Education
Kenyah Sandy plays 12-year-old Kingsley Smith in “Education.”
Image: BBC
Another powerful testament to the might of collective action to demand change, Education examines ingrained racist policy within UK schools. The film tells the story of 12-year-old Kingsley Smith (Kenyah Sandy), who is forced to move schools after being unjustly accused of “disruption.” It’s found to be part of an unofficial segregation policy meant to benefit white children over their Black classmates in terms of their education, and a group of West Indian mothers fight to change it.
McQueen told the Guardian the film is inspired by his “own narrative within that time in the early 70s and the [issue of] educationally subnormal schools,” a racist strategy that saw Black children moved out of mainstream schools and into those for the “educationally subnormal,” something notably written about by Grenadian writer Bernard Coad.
How to watch: Available Dec. 13 on BBC One and BBC iPlayer in the UK, and on Amazon Prime in the U.S.