Fay Craig - Bongo Baby

1962
Sound
2m

Jamaican dancer Fay Craig gets down to a bongo rhythym in this kitsch 1960s dance film.

Talented Jamaican-born dancer Fay Craig boosts the blood pressure of two weedy-looking white-coated bongo bashers as she dances up a storm in this early 1960s drum-dance bonanza, produced for the short-lived Cinebox film jukebox system. The Cinebox films all flaunt their over-the-top, kitsch aesthetic, but the exoticisation of Craig through settings and costumes is problematic.

Fay Craig is known to have starred in at least three short films shot for the Cinebox system. A few years earlier in 1959, she'd made an uncredited appearance in Basil Dearden's crime drama Sapphire. Around the time Bongo Baby was produced, she had a role as a nightclub stripper in Charles Saunders' B picture Jungle Street (1961).

Black Britain on Film

Striking, illuminating and sometimes surprising images of black culture, community and characters, spanning over a century of British film and TV.

From some of the earliest appearances at the dawn of the 20th century to groundbreaking postwar documentaries and contemporary features, this collection charts changing attitudes and hidden histories. Here are the trailblazers, the icons, the stereotypes, the controversies. These richly varied films uncover sometimes surprising histories of black culture and community. They tackle troubling issues of race, representation and identity. And they highlight some of the best of black British filmmaking, from the work of pioneers Horace Ové and Menelik Shabazz to later innovators John Akomfrah and Ngozi Onwurah