Bye Angelique Chrisafis and Mark Mace
The British film industry is institutionally racist, black
actors and producers said yesterday - welcoming Halle Berry's dream of racial equality
in cinema, but saying it was a long way off in Britain.
Despite the success of the Asian-themed East Is East, and
the growing audience for Bollywood movies at British multiplexes, the outlook
for black film actors is bleak. No black British actor has taken home a Bafta
for a leading role. There has been no black romantic lead in a big-budget,
exported feature film, only a handful of stereotypical gangster or "bad
guy" roles.
Actors such as Eamonn Walker, who starred in Othello and
Unbreakable, and Adrian Lester, who took the lead in Peter Brook's Hamlet, have
recently sought "more interesting" roles in the US.
Lester, who starred in Primary Colors, has said he was
forced to travel outside Britain to find roles with "IQ-value
attached".
Lennie James, who appeared in the recent comedies Snatch and
Lucky Break, and stars in the forthcoming 24 Hour Party People, set in
Manchester, said he had launched writing and directing projects to maintain a
"presence" in an industry that sidelines black people.
Fresh from a British Oscar party to celebrate the success of
Denzel Washington and Berry, he said: "Hopefully, these Oscars will mark a
sea change in the British attitude that a black lead will not 'sell' a film
abroad.
"The industry's attitude is not malicious, it stems
from ignorance. I only began to get properly cast as an actor in my own right
10 years after I left drama school. The US has huge race problems, but at least
in US culture everyone gets a chance. Here, we are sidelined and insulted.
"Denzel Washington said at the Oscars that there was a
time when black actors were filmed so they could be cut from the final product
in certain US states. The way we feel in Britain is not far off that."
Black actors such as Sophie Okonedo, who appears in Stephen
Frears' forthcoming Dirty Pretty Things, and Colin Salmon, in the new Bond
film, Die Another Day, prove there is a talent base in Britain. But many black
actors, such as Oscar-nominated Marianne Jean-Baptiste, who appeared in Secrets
and Lies, have travelled to the US for better parts.
Johann Insanally is a producer with Spirit Dance, a company
established by the American black actor Forest Whitaker, which last year
launched a Film Four project to encourage black talent in Britain. He said:
"Halle Berry's award and comments mean a lot in the British acting world
because she and Washington were awarded for ability and skill, independent of
skin colour.
"But institutional racism exists. You go to a financier
and say you want to make a film starring black people and you are hit with that
backer's economic concerns. We do not have a black British actor considered to
'generate' a certain amount of money here or abroad. I am optimistic new
writing, directing and acting talent will change that."
Trevor Thomas, who appeared in one of the first black
British films, Black Joy, in 1977, said not enough has changed in 20 years.
"I just submitted a script to a major British film and
television funder and it came back with a note saying it was too
'mono-racial'," he said. "It had black, Indian and white characters
in it but the leading roles were black."
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Source : The Guardian,
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