Filming inside Rakhams
(1 x23′) Birmingham Film & Video Workshop
1981
Written, Produced & Directed by: Yugesh Walia
Photography: Donald Guy
Editors: Yugesh Walia & Donald Guy
Co-Producer: Roger Shannon
Cast: Pat Donaldson, Nancy Johnson, Dennis Osbourne
Also featuring: The KOKUMA Dance Company
The influences of black urban blues on many white recording artists is indisputable. Eric Clapton recorded ‘Swing Low Sweet Chariot’ while being responsible for some controversial views on repatriation of immigrants. The film takes this irony as its basic theme and attempts to show the way in which white society adopts black culture – focusing on music, dance and fashion – and yet rejects it through racism. It follows an evening in the life of Pauline, a young black woman and a dancer who is confronted by these attitudes on a daily basis.
Sweet Chariot began as an extension to a film making course the Birmingham Film Workshop ran in conjunction with the Handsworth Cultural Centre and although over the period of the filming it grew into a bigger project than originally planned, it nonetheless remains a modest attempt to look at cultural values in a different light.
