+ discussion with filmmaker and writer Imruh Bakari, writer, critic and historian Rianna Jade Parker and musician and educator Deirdre Pascall. Host is Xavier Alexandre Pillai, BFI National Archive Curator.
In this groundbreaking and rare account of the 1980 Notting Hill Carnival, the filmmakers weave together a range of performances from reggae bands Aswad, Sons of Jah and Brimstone, amongst many others. Interspersed between them are interviews with the artists about their lyrics and music, and conversations with audience members about their lives and experiences. The result is a powerful documentary of the Black community in Ladbroke Grove at the beginning of the 1980s.
Grove Carnival
A vivid and kaleidoscopic snapshot of preparations for the 1980 Notting Hill Carnival.
Speakers
Imruh Bakari is a filmmaker and writer. Born in St Kitts, he has lived in the UK and East Africa since the 1960s. Along with Henry Martin and Menelik Shabazz, he set up Kuumba Production in 1982, which provided a base for the formation of Ceddo Film & Video Workshop. From 1999–2004 he was Festival Director of the Zanzibar International Film Festival (ZIFF), and a member of the Advisory Council of the Pan-African Federation of Filmmakers (FEPACI) from 2012–15. His published works include African Experiences of Cinema (eds. Imruh Bakari and Mbye Cham, BFI, 1996), and poetry collections including Without Passport or Apology (Smokestack Books, 2017) and The Madman in this House (Smokestack Books, 2021). His film and television credits include African Tales (2005/2008), Blue Notes and Exiled Voices (1991), The Mark of the Hand – Aubrey Williams (1986), and Riots and Rumours of Riots (1981). He currently lectures in film studies and screenwriting at the University of Winchester; is a director of the June Givanni PanAfrican Cinema Archive (JGPACA); and is an associate, collaborator and supporter of Numbi Arts and the Somali Museum UK.
Rianna Jade Parker is a writer, critic, historian and curator based in South London where she studied her MA in Contemporary Art Theory at Goldsmiths College. She is a founding member of artist-collective Thick/er Black Lines, whose work was exhibited in the landmark exhibition Get Up, Stand Up Now: Generations of Black Creative Pioneers at Somerset House, London. She is a Contributing Editor of Frieze magazine and co-curated War Inna Babylon: The Community’s Struggle for Truths and Rights at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London. Her first book A Brief History of Black British Art was published by Tate in 2021 and her second book Image and Belief is forthcoming from Frances Lincoln/Quarto.
Deirdre Pascall is a Music Business Lecturer at SAE Institute, former ballet pianist, cellist and touring musician trained at Royal College of Music, Guildhall and Howard University (USA). Currently she is a Director of Good Vibes Records and Music Ltd (GVRM), licensing both rare and iconic Black and other cultural audio and image content used across mainstream Film, Radio, TV and Creative Industries for over 40 years. This company was founded by her parents Alex and Joyce Pascall and is one of the long-standing consultative members of African Odysseys programming at the BFI.
Licensing rare, ground-breaking multimedia and records has been a main staple of her work business, which has been used by BBC, Caribbean, USA and European mainstream media and heritage industries; they include primary source, iconic culturally dynamic interviews and events that include WW1 veterans, Lord Kichener, The Mighty Sparrow, Pan arrangers, Mas-makers, Miriam Makeba, Bob Marley, Muhammad Ali, Pop icons and other interviews conducted and produced by her father and Broadcaster Alex Pascall, O.B.E. dubbed the Voice of Black London by The Guardian.
Originally a keyboardist/cellist/pianist, Deirdre’s discography includes Howard University Jazz Ensemble, Keith Ailer’s Spaces and Places, the Reggae Philharmonic Orchestra. Her performance career began at age 11, as a Black London society cellist and pianist for both local and major events in London –including the Black Radical Book Fair and a concert at London’s Queen Elizabeth Hall – and extended as an adult to private cello and piano serenades for former Vice President Al Gore, Prince, an impromptu appearance with Buddy Miles in Italy performing as a cellist with Round Coloured Note, international tours to South Korea and Spain with the late Kenyan artist Ayub Ogada, an opening act with her own bands for Gladys Knight, Eagle Eye Cherry and Grace Jones, as well as cutting her teeth in Jazz mentored by Keter Betts, Geri Allen and Steelbands in Washington D.C. featuring Boogy Sharpe and Caiso Steelband to name a few, styling her cello playing as a traditional calypso bass.
As a composer, her film credits include Panorama, Tonight with Trevor McDonald and 4 co-written song titles with her father, (pioneering BBC broadcaster, a former Chairman of the Notting Hill Carnival, Co-Founder of the Voice newspaper and songwriter of 7 title songs in the landmark TV children’s series, Teletubbies). She is one of the archivists for the independent documentary film currently in production produced and edited by mainstream TV filmmaker Ayandele Pascall about the life and times of both parents, the Alex and Joyce Pascall.
Host: Xavier Alexandre Pillai is television curator at the BFI, a freelance film programmer and a trustee at LUX Moving Image. He has programmed for the ICO’s Cinema of Ideas strand, the London Film Festival and the Trinidad and Tobago Film Festival. His interests lie in multicultural television, government communications, documentary, and colonial film. He can be found online @xavi____a.
GROVE CARNIVAL
Directors: Henry Martin, Steve Shaw
UK 1981
18 mins
GROVE MUSIC
A film by: Henry Martin, Steve Shaw
Production Company: Isha Films
Sponsor: Arts Council of Great Britain
Production Manager: Chris Rose
Production Assistant: Paul Anderson
Researcher: Jacqui Boyce
Screenplay: Henry Martin, Steve Shaw *
Photography: Steve Shaw
Concert Photography: Tim Johnson, Kim Longinotto, Chris Cox, Steve Shaw
Editor: Kevin Hewitt
Music re-recording: Mikey ‘Big Dread’ Campbell
Sound Recording: John Lundsten
Sound: John Lundsten, Diana Ruston
With
Colin Prescod
Aswad (Songs: ‘Only Jah Children’, ‘Rebel Soul’, ‘It’s Not Our Wish’)
Black Harmony & Inity Rhythm
Brimstone (Song: ‘You Are the One’)
Junior Brown (Song, ‘He Don’t Have Anyone’)
Sons of Jah (Songs, ‘Fooling the Children’, ‘Zimbabwe Victory Song’)
UK 1981
48 mins
* uncredited
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