Carnival Fantastique

1960
Sound
18m

Vibrant documentary that captures Trinidad's famous street carnival in 1960.

Held over the two days before Ash Wednesday, Trinidad's famous carnival is the most anticipated event of the island's cultural calendar. Here Edric Connor shows us the sights, sounds and quirky customs of this glorious event.

Filmmaker Edric Connor was a Trinidadian actor and singer who popularised Day Dah Light, the song that became an international hit for Harry Belafonte as Day-O (The Banana Boat Song). An actor in British and American films of the 1950s, Connor went on, with his wife Pearl, to set up the first theatrical agency for black British performers, the Afro-Asian-Caribbean Agency.

Black British Filmmaking

A selection of shorts and features by black writers and directors, from milestones of the 60s and 70s to contemporary hits.

For much of the history of British film and TV, black stories were overseen by white filmmakers. By the 1960s, black writers and directors were demanding to tell their own stories, in their own way. This collection celebrates the work of black storytellers who have enriched our understanding of the black British experience. Landmark features like Horace Ové's Pressure (1975) and Menelik Shabazz's Burning an Illusion (1981) stand beside earlier milestones in short filmmaking by Lionel Ngakane and Lloyd Reckord, and 1990s work by Isaac Julien and Julian Henriques. And you'll find hits by leading lights in new black British cinema, including Noel Clarke, Destiny Ekaragha and Debbie Tucker Green. The collection also highlights the work of Ngozi Onwurah, who became the first black British woman director to get a UK theatrical release with her extraordinary debut feature Welcome II the Terrordome (1995), a controversial dystopian fable unavailable for many years.