ESSENTIAL INDUSTRY AND AWARD NEWS
SEPTEMBER 16, 2020
Steve McQueen Brings Lost History Back to Life
Steve McQueen’s Small Axe digs into the complex, and often buried, history of England’s Black population. The anthology series, which debuts at the (virtual) New York Film Festival on September 17 before airing on Amazon later this fall, focuses specifically on the West Indian community between 1969 and 1982. Each “episode” is a film unto itself tackling a different true story. Mangrove (starring Letitia Wright), for instance, tells the story of a group of Black activists who protested against brutal police raids, and ended up in a high-profile criminal trial. Lovers Rock is a cool, atmospheric film that unfolds at a series of blues parties over the course of one night. And Red, White and Blue captures the complicated story of Black police officer Leroy Logan (played with heartbreaking grit by John Boyega). McQueen previously shepherded Lupita Nyong’o and Michael Fassbender into the mainstream, and he told V.F.’s Yohana Desta that part of his mission with Small Axe was to usher in a wave of new talent both in front of and behind the camera. He intends the series partly as an ode to all the Black talent that was barred from the industry between the late 1960s and the early 1980s. “There have been two generations of filmmakers, editors, costume designers, cinematographers, actors who have been lost in this country because they were never given the opportunity, or never thought they had the possibility of being involved in the film world,” he said. “We have a lost narrative in our trajectory.”
Elsewhere in HWD, critic Richard Lawson reviews the mostly ghastly thriller The Devil All the Time; Trevor Noah cheers as a Fox & Friends host pushes back against the Rambler in Chief; Madonna announces that she will direct her own life story, as if she hasn’t being doing exactly that for decades; Chris Rock talks about his old friend Jimmy Fallon’s blackface impression; and more.
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