The Passion of Remembrance review – absorbing fusion of black radicalism and feminism | Film

Here is a 1986 film co-directed by radical feminist film-maker Maureen Blackwood with artist-director Isaac Julien. Their sensibilities are a fruitful match here, creating a knotty, complex, self-questioning piece of work: drama, essay movie and video art crossover. Blackwood and Julien were drawing on the black power radicalism of the 60s and the feminism of the 80s in ways that could amount to a British new wave.

In a stylised wilderness, a male and female figure confront each other ill-temperedly: the woman accusing the man of not allowing women any agency or space within the liberation movement. In a parallel realist drama, a family deals with racist abuse (often from off-duty police) and their own ideological and generational splits on the subject of injustice and empowerment, and how gay people of colour find themselves marginalised by the community from which they are hoping for support.

Most striking in this movie are the extended montage sequences (the framing device being that these are the work of an art student): we see protests, demos and police confrontation which Blackwood and Julien have formed into a hypnotic and brilliant collage, tinting and grading the colour and adding a hip-hop soundtrack including the Aleem brothers. The effect is entirely absorbing; easily the most interesting and creative use of this kind of archive material I have ever seen.

Here is a 1986 film co-directed by radical feminist film-maker Maureen Blackwood with artist-director Isaac Julien. Their sensibilities are a fruitful match here, creating a knotty, complex, self-questioning piece of work: drama, essay movie and video art crossover. Blackwood and Julien were drawing on the black power radicalism of the 60s and the feminism of the 80s in ways that could amount to a British new wave.

In a stylised wilderness, a male and female figure confront each other ill-temperedly: the woman accusing the man of not allowing women any agency or space within the liberation movement. In a parallel realist drama, a family deals with racist abuse (often from off-duty police) and their own ideological and generational splits on the subject of injustice and empowerment, and how gay people of colour find themselves marginalised by the community from which they are hoping for support.

Most striking in this movie are the extended montage sequences (the framing device being that these are the work of an art student): we see protests, demos and police confrontation which Blackwood and Julien have formed into a hypnotic and brilliant collage, tinting and grading the colour and adding a hip-hop soundtrack including the Aleem brothers. The effect is entirely absorbing; easily the most interesting and creative use of this kind of archive material I have ever seen.