- Title: We the Ragamuffin and Babymother
- Date: Friday 11th October, 18:00
- Venue: Birkbeck Institute for the Moving Image, 43 Gordon Square, London WC1H 0PY
- Book: https://my.bbk.ac.uk/ords/f?p=832:100:0:::100:P100_EV_ID:44450
Screening of We the Ragamuffin (1992), Babymother (1998) and Word, Sound, Power (2020). Introduced by director Julian Henriques and producer Parminder Vir OBE.
Babymother tells the story of Anita (Anjela Lauren Smith), a young Black woman and mother of two, who, together with her two friends (Caroline Chikezie and Jocelyn Jee Esien), is determined to become a successful dancehall dee-jay, make a professional recording of her music, and transgress the role assigned to her by British society at large and, more locally, the music scene in which she is a participant. However, Anita’s ambitions are met with various challenges along the way, not least the lived and financial realities of parenting, her babyfather Byron’s (Wil Johnson) careerist ambitions, and the disapproval of her family.
Written and directed by Julian Henriques and produced by Parminder Vir, this film is often identified as the first Black British musical, and it is focussed on the dancehall scene in Harlesden, northwest London. In his review of the film, Professor Stuart Hall described the film’s treatment of dancehall as ‘first rate’, praising the recording and performance scenes, Carroll Thompson and Cinderella’s musical contributions, and Peter Middleton’s cinematography. To this list, the late Annie Curtis Jones’ extraordinary costume design must be added. Her decision to incorporate fabrics and jewellery purchased from Punjabi-owned shops in Southall reflects the heterogenous cultural influences on the emerging dancehall fashion. Just as the music combines different influences, so too the clothing. In his review, Hall also pinpointed the central issue raised by the film: ‘Babymother marks another episode in second-wave feminism’s long, incomplete march. It reminds us that popular culture, despite its elements of celebration and resistance, is also and always an ambiguous and contradictory space. Among other issues, Babymother poses the question of just how, and by what complicated shifts, the liberation of women is connected to girl power.’
We the Ragamuffin (1992), Henriques’ musical short film for Channel 4, can be considered the ‘stepping stone’ to the feature-length Babymother. Shot on the North Peckham Estate, We the Ragamuffin features a cast of local musicians, including Buckey Ranks, Jerry Lionz, and the late Militant Dee. The film moves between musical performance and improvised drama, outdoor sound systems (Lewisham’s legendary Saxon Studio International) and interior spaces, including recording studios, club and domestic spaces. As with Babymother, this work is a fictional film that has a documentary quality, a time-capsule that indexes a local music scene and social housing that has since been demolished. Both works also feature women stepping into roles that were previously preserved for men. In the case of We the Ragamuffin, this includes a female dee-jay (Militant Dee) and promoter (Annette Toyloy). This event finishes with one of Henriques’ short documentaries, part of his ongoing research project, investigating sound systems and other street technologies around the world.
Word, Sound, Power (2020, 10 min.) is documentary produced and directed by Daniel Acevedo and Recardo Vega about the Columbian sound system El Gran Latido. Henriques commissioned it as part of his ERC research project, Sonic Street Technologies.
Notes
Spanning musical, documentary, agit-prop and essay film, this retrospective looks at some of Professor Julian Henriques and Parminder Vir OBE’s work as directors and producers in film and television over several decades. The programme has been developed with the intention not only of screening a series of important works but also of considering the conditions of possibility, the political, social and aesthetic connections, that make movements and moments possible. The screenings and discussions should appeal to the younger generation looking for inspiration from the film history they’ve inherited as well as those who were there at the time.
The 1980s fundamentally transformed British film and television, witnessing the launch of Channel 4 (1982) and the emergence of an independent Black British cinema. As this series attests, Henriques and Vir were active in both. In 1987, they established the production company Formation Films and made Exit No Exit, a thirty-minute Orpheus-inspired dance drama set in the London Underground, directed by Henriques for Dance on Four.
In the early 1980s, Vir worked at the Commonwealth Institute and, together with Jim Pines, co-organised the Black Film Festival at the Commonwealth Institute in London in 1982. She then began working at Greater London Council (GLC) and, as Imruh Bakari has recently noted, convened the Third Eye: London’s Festival of Third World Cinema (1983) collaborating with others including June Givanni and Lionel Ngakane. As the GLC Ethnic Arts Officer (1982- 1986), Vir developed the policy for funding the Black film and video sector, an initiative that paved the way for funding important workshops in London, including Black Audio Film Collective, Sankofa Film and Video, Ceddo Film and Video Workshop, and Retake Film and Video Collective, as well as independent production companies like Kuumba Productions and Penumbra Productions. These crucial events and initiatives have led to a revolutionary body of work and discourse that artists, curators and scholars continue to grapple with today. In 1986, Vir presented a showreel of Black and Asian filmmakers to the editorial staff in the BBC, where she would be employed, eventually as series producer, until 1994, working with many important filmmakers from across the globe, including Deepa Dhanraj, Gaston Kaboré, Michel Khleifi and Raoul Peck.
Biographies
Professor Julian Henriques
Professor Julian Henriques is convenor of the MA Cultural Studies programme, director of the Topology Research Unit and co-founder of Sound System Outernational research group in the Department of Media and Communications, Goldsmiths, University of London. Previously Julian was head of film and television at CARIMAC at the University of the West Indies, Kingston, Jamaica. Julian researches street cultures, music and technologies including those of the reggae sound system. He has credits as a writer-director with the feature film Babymother, a reggae musical, the improvised short drama We the Ragamuffin and as a producer with numerous BBC and Channel Four documentaries; a sound artist with the sculpture Knots & Donuts at the Tate Modern, a founding editor with the Ideology & Consciousness journal and as an author with others Changing the Subject: Psychology, Social Regulation and Subjectivity and the monographs Sonic Bodies: Reggae Sound Systems Performance Techniques and Ways of Knowing and Sonic Media: the Street Technology of the Jamaican Sound System (forthcoming). He is a co-founding trustee of the Stuart Hall Foundation and the PI on an ERC Consolidator research grant (2021 – 2025), Sonic Street Technologies.
Parminder Vir OBE
With a professional career spanning four decades, Parminder Vir OBE has dedicated her life to amplifying untold narratives and empowering underserved communities. Central to her mission is an unwavering belief in the transformative potential of ideas and stories to ignite profound change. Her work has championed African Entrepreneurship, brought untold stories to film and television, and nurtured creativity in the arts and culture. She is currently writing a memoir that interweaves the many facets of her career.
As CEO of the Tony Elumelu Foundation and Advisory Board Member from 2014-2012, Vir designed and led a groundbreaking entrepreneurship programme that impacted over 10,000 entrepreneurs across 54 African nations. She remains a staunch advocate for entrepreneurship as a key driver of Africa’s social and economic development, reshaping the continent’s narrative through the stories of its entrepreneurs. Vir continues to offer strategic guidance as an Advisory Board Member for several African enterprises and promotes structured approaches to African entrepreneurship through writing, speaking engagements, and mentorship.
An award-winning film and television producer with 30 years of experience, Vir has produced for the BBC, ITV, Channel 4, and more. She co-founded the Cultural Diversity Network (CDN), advocating for greater diversity in UK media. As an investment manager at Ingenious Media, she managed the £40 million World Cinema Fund. Also, she served as a nonexecutive director at Goldcrest Films, advising on a £20 million capital fund for Oscar-winning films.
Vir’s influence extends to government boards, including non-executive roles at the Department of Culture, Media and Sports, the UK Film Council, the UK India Business Council, and the UKTI Asia Task Force, shaping international strategies and policies.
In 2002, Vir was awarded an OBE for her contributions to film and television, and in 2010, she received an Honorary MA from the University for the Creative Arts. Born in Punjab, India, she moved to England at age ten and is married to Professor Julian Henriques.
