Celebrate What?
- TV Movie
- 1968
- 26m
YOUR RATING
Photos
Storyline
Featured review
A creative, socially concerned film with mature understanding.
This absolute gem of a film takes a critical look at the social setting surrounding the first St Paul's Carnival in Bristol, 1968.
The film cuts between various settings and cultural activities in the community and that rainy Saturday in 1968 - with a sparse collection of festival participants and floats - including the scouts, churches and Rainbow Steel Pan Orchestra. It also reveals a much wider range of communities taking part in that first event, which we don't associate with the 'Carnival' event today - five decades later.
Overall, the story of the first 'St Paul's Festival', demonstrates a resilience - of communities who in the face of rejection and the English weather continue to learn about, express and share their cultures to make modern Britain.
Made for BBC 'South & West' by director Colin Thomas, Celebrate What? Takes what may be a surprising amount of freedom to be creatively executed and make a strong social commentary too.
Under Mike Penrose's old-school BBC voice, there is a strong sense of concern for the lives of the people and children, who have recently immigrated to England, Bristol, St Paul's and the people who live there. There is also a very mature understanding of the nuances, the experiences and the less obvious impacts of the new social and cultural setting.
Even the title of the film makes no bones about its position - refusing to get too caught up in the distraction of singing and dancing - in favour of highlighting the difficulties faced by the new Bristolians - in housing, education, employment; with economic deprivation, racism in media, toys that don't represent them and the strains of acculturation.
Though the film also clearly enjoys some of the charming performances it captures, which in 2020 we might thank the filmmaker and the BBC for being there to record.
The film also plays a lot with the juxtaposition of race, class and identity, UK-United States - with some creative, quick-cut sequences, that call us to ponder its core questions. This technique is deployed at the start and end with what looks like racially-motivated disturbances during the civil rights fight there. The filmmaker seems to be reminding us of concerns about such racial violence in the UK, prompted by degrading social conditions. One such headline during the Bristol Bus Boycott of 1963, warned 'There will be no Little Rock here'.
Only 25 minutes of film but it is obvious that a lot of time was spent getting to know that community and their challenges, not just dipping in and out again. Something the BBC is often accused of in more recent times.
Today we shout 'Black Lives Matter' - though it seems like this is what Colin Thomas and his team ( some small voices at the BBC at least) were trying to say in 1968.
The film cuts between various settings and cultural activities in the community and that rainy Saturday in 1968 - with a sparse collection of festival participants and floats - including the scouts, churches and Rainbow Steel Pan Orchestra. It also reveals a much wider range of communities taking part in that first event, which we don't associate with the 'Carnival' event today - five decades later.
Overall, the story of the first 'St Paul's Festival', demonstrates a resilience - of communities who in the face of rejection and the English weather continue to learn about, express and share their cultures to make modern Britain.
Made for BBC 'South & West' by director Colin Thomas, Celebrate What? Takes what may be a surprising amount of freedom to be creatively executed and make a strong social commentary too.
Under Mike Penrose's old-school BBC voice, there is a strong sense of concern for the lives of the people and children, who have recently immigrated to England, Bristol, St Paul's and the people who live there. There is also a very mature understanding of the nuances, the experiences and the less obvious impacts of the new social and cultural setting.
Even the title of the film makes no bones about its position - refusing to get too caught up in the distraction of singing and dancing - in favour of highlighting the difficulties faced by the new Bristolians - in housing, education, employment; with economic deprivation, racism in media, toys that don't represent them and the strains of acculturation.
Though the film also clearly enjoys some of the charming performances it captures, which in 2020 we might thank the filmmaker and the BBC for being there to record.
The film also plays a lot with the juxtaposition of race, class and identity, UK-United States - with some creative, quick-cut sequences, that call us to ponder its core questions. This technique is deployed at the start and end with what looks like racially-motivated disturbances during the civil rights fight there. The filmmaker seems to be reminding us of concerns about such racial violence in the UK, prompted by degrading social conditions. One such headline during the Bristol Bus Boycott of 1963, warned 'There will be no Little Rock here'.
Only 25 minutes of film but it is obvious that a lot of time was spent getting to know that community and their challenges, not just dipping in and out again. Something the BBC is often accused of in more recent times.
Today we shout 'Black Lives Matter' - though it seems like this is what Colin Thomas and his team ( some small voices at the BBC at least) were trying to say in 1968.
helpful•00
- robmitch-96581
- Jun 30, 2020
Details
- Runtime26 minutes
- Color
- Sound mix
- Aspect ratio
- 1.33 : 1
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