Men of Two Worlds

Pinewood Film Studios
1946-09-09
Sound
109m

Handsomely-presented drama about a man caught between his privileged Western education and traditional African roots.

British Guyanese actor Robert Adams plays Kisenga, a Western-educated African man returning to his home village, in this fascinating drama about changing colonial Africa. Caught between the traditions of the villagers and the cultural dominance of the colonial rulers, Kisenga is forced to decide on the right way forward for his country. Shot in glorious Technicolor, this is a pertinent political drama from well-regarded director Thorold Dickinson which tackles the difficult legacy of colonialism as the sun set on the British Empire.

Black Lives

Portraits of public and private lives against the shifting social climate of 20th century Britain.

Black communities, like many Global majority groups, have long been ill-served by a mainstream British media accustomed to reflecting predominantly white, middle-class lives - a problem entrenched in the second half of the 20th century with the rise of television. Yet a rich tapestry of work from across the boundaries of fiction and non-fiction, film and TV, made for (though not always by) black people, does exist. This selection contains many surprises – some joyous, some sobering, some heartbreaking – and highlights the often painfully slow progress in addressing negative representations and stereotypes on screen. Impassioned and sometimes violent dispatches from the front line in the fight for racial equality can be found here, but so too can records of progress: in the pioneers breaking new ground in culture, politics and sport, and in the more mundane glimpses of everyday life. And this story is not just London’s story: the selection takes a journey around Britain, to a Nigerian wedding in 1960s Cornwall, an ‘African village’ in Essex and a Caribbean restaurant opening in West Bromwich; Newcastle