Asian Community Centre
From the collection of
From the collection of
John Swallow meets a group of elderly Asian men in West Park, Wolverhampton who are victims of cultural and social 'rules' that mean they cannot stay at home if a woman they are not married to is also at home. Consequently, they play cards all day in the park. Being outside during the summer is bearable but when the weather turns it's more of a problem. Luckily Wolverhampton council is stepping in to give the men their very own community centre or 'House of Cards'.
From local news to feature film, through home movies and TV documentaries, this collection showcases South Asian Britons in front of and behind the camera. The contribution of colonial troops is illuminated through the earliest newsreels, while hardhitting current affairs programmes highlight the struggles faced in the 1960s, 1970s and beyond. Public information films produced for South Asian audiences feature alongside Hindi-language films made in Britain and interviews with prominent Asian-British figures. A bold wave of British Asian filmmaking in the 1990s is represented through early works by the likes of Gurinder Chadha and Asif Kapadia.