(1 x 40′) Commission for Racial Equality
1985
Produced & Directed by: Yugesh Walia & Sunandan Walia
Photography: Peter Rance
Sound: Alun Curnock
Editor: Yugesh Walia
Format: DOCUMENTARY
This was the company’s first commissioned work.
Made with a grant from the Commission for Racial Equality, this video explores the relationship between language and power. How important is one’s mother-tongue?
Throughout the 19th and 20th centuries the South Asian and Caribbean immigrants coming to Britain, and indeed Welsh people in their own country, were denied the use of their mother-tongue languages in an attempt to suppress their ethnic identities. But in the 1970s and 80s these communities began fighting to regain control of their languages and dialects in order to forge their own cultural identities and heritage within a growing multi-ethnic, multi-linguistic Britain.
With contributions from eminent academics such as Stuart Hall and Bikkhu Parekh, historian and author Gwyn Williams, and the dub-poet Benjamin Zephaniah this video captures the real life experiences of teachers and children for whom Gujarati, Punjabi, Caribbean, Creole and Welsh are as important as English.
