{"id":54339,"date":"2017-06-29T02:07:55","date_gmt":"2017-06-29T02:07:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=54339"},"modified":"2017-06-29T20:01:16","modified_gmt":"2017-06-29T20:01:16","slug":"ngozi-onwurah-the-forgotten-pioneer-of-black-british-film","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=54339","title":{"rendered":"Ngozi Onwurah: the forgotten pioneer of black British film"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.gal-dem.com\/ngozi-onwurah-the-forgotten-pioneer-of-black-british-film\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><em><strong>Ngozi Onwurah: the forgotten pioneer of black British film<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.gal-dem.com\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">gal-dem<\/a><br \/>\n2017-06-20<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.gal-dem.com\/author\/varaidzo\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><strong>Varaidzo<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n<table border=\"0\" width=\"552\">\n<tbody>\n<tr>\n<td><a href=\"http:\/\/www.gal-dem.com\/ngozi-onwurah-the-forgotten-pioneer-of-black-british-film\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i1.wp.com\/www.gal-dem.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/06\/body2.jpg?resize=759%2C500\" width=\"550\" border=\"0\" \/><\/a><br \/>\n<small>&#8216;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=6103\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">The Body Beautiful<\/a>&#8216; by <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Ngozi_Onwurah\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Ngozi Onwurah<\/a>. Image via BFI<\/small><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Ngozi_Onwurah\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Ngozi Onwurah<\/a>, despite being the director of the first independent black British feature film to be released, is not a household name. For a long time, her film <a href=\"http:\/\/www.imdb.com\/title\/tt0111681\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><em>Welcome II The Terrordome<\/em><\/a> (1995), was the only film by a black woman to have a UK release. Like many black British women pioneers, her contributions to her craft have been pushed to the peripheries of British film history, yet revisiting her films\u00a0reveals them to be prescient explorations of\u00a0race that are just as relevant today.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/7w2eYw7nWNY?rel=0\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Onwurah was born to a white mother and a black father in 1960s <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Nigeria\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Nigeria<\/a>. She was raised in <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/England\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">England<\/a> by her mother, alongside her two other siblings (one of whom, Simon Onwurah, produced <em>Welcome II The Terrordome<\/em>). Her first work, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=6107\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><em>Coffee Coloured Children<\/em><\/a> (1988), uses Onwurah\u2019s own personal narrative to look at the experiences of being a black mixed-race child in England. It begins gleefully with folk of all races gathered together, dancing, laughing, rejoicing, to the ever optimistic soundtrack of <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Blue_Mink\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Blue Mink\u2019s<\/a> song \u2018<a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=zAWn4FO1MOw\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Melting Pot<\/a>\u2019. The tone of the film darkens almost instantly, its extended background monologue beginning with the question \u201cour childhood memories are blurred, murky, why did the big boys throw dog shit on our front door?\u201d. This is coupled with the visual of this particular act being reproduced for the viewer&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Read the entire article <a href=\"http:\/\/www.gal-dem.com\/ngozi-onwurah-the-forgotten-pioneer-of-black-british-film\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ngozi Onwurah, despite being the director of the first independent black British feature film to be released, is not a household name. For a long time, her film Welcome II The Terrordome (1995), was the only film by a black woman to have a UK release.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,1245,8413,8,10,25],"tags":[24052,2519,27185,26806],"class_list":["post-54339","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-biography","category-communications","category-media-archive","category-uk","category-women","tag-gal-dem","tag-ngozi-onwurah","tag-simon-onwurah","tag-varaidzo"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54339","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=54339"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54339\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":54359,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54339\/revisions\/54359"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=54339"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=54339"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=54339"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}