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Earl Cameron remembered at the BFI

The pioneering life of one of the first black actors to break Britain's colour bar in film and TV
4th August 2021

    The pioneering Bermuda-born actor, Earl Cameron – who died in July 2020, aged 102 – is commemorated in a new season of films and talks at the BFI.  In 1950, Cameron was one of the first black actors to break through in the British film and TV industry with the film, Pool of London.  At a time when thoughtful British journals carried headlines like ‘Would You Let Your Daughter Marry a Negro?’ the film was seen and celebrated for its sensitive depiction of a relationship between a black man and a white woman. The Earl Cameron season, reflecting on the actor’s life and career, is programmed by the actor, broadcaster and director, Burt Caesar. BFI Southbank’s Earl Cameron season runs until 31 August. http://bfi.org.uk/whatson

    In Olney River

    Exploring the feeling of being watched by white families as a black man, while submerged in Olney River

    Time was loud

    Zebib K. Abraham on breaking free from the stifling demands for efficiency and learning to lean into time at the WritersMosaic Villa Lugara retreat

    Wow, diaspora for real

    Reflections on diaspora and the fantasy of return through conversations with friends and strangers

    Love forms

    The experience of silently reading Claire Adam’s Love Forms is one of immense and daunting loneliness

    The Quiet Ear

    The Quiet Ear by poet Raymond Antrobus explores what it is to be deaf in the world of the hearing through his own upbringing and the lives of other deaf artists

    Nowhere

    Khalid Abdalla’s one-man show Nowhere raises questions of 'Who do we feel responsible for?' and ‘What [is] a life worth?’

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    Preaching

    'Preaching': A new poem by the T.S.Eliot Prize-winning poet Roger Robinson, from his forthcoming New and Selected Poems (Bloomsbury in 2026).

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    Walking in the Wake

    Walking in the Wake was produced for the Estuary Festival (2021) in collaboration with Elsa James, Dubmorphology and Michael McMillan who meditates on the River Thames as we follow black pilgrims traversing sites of Empire.

    Illuminating, in-depth conversations between writers.

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    What we leave we carry, The series that tells the true-life stories of migration to the UK.

    The series that tells the true-life stories of migration to the UK.

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