Playing Away

Showcasing three short films by American writer James Baldwin, wherein he muses about race, sexuality and civil rights, among other topics, in Istanbul, Paris and Great Britain.

The Mangrove Nine trial resulted from conflict between the police and the Black community in Notting Hill that had escalated from the end of the 1960s onwards. The Mangrove case began when around 150 Black people protested against long-term police harassment of the popular Mangrove Restaurant in Ladbroke Grove. A documentary film, 'The Mangrove Nine' (directed and produced by Franco Rosso), was made in 1973, and includes interviews with the defendants recorded before the final verdicts. The Mangrove Nine film portrays interviews with the defendants recorded before the final verdicts were delivered at the trial, as well as contemporary comments from Ian Macdonald and others.

"These Indian films. They're done to a formula - songs, dance, routines and a lot of sentimental heavy breathing." When her 17-year-old son Roy falls in love with a Muslim girl, and a Bangladeshi butcher seeks help from her husband Raji, Leela realises that the tears and romance of Indian cinema are closer to her own life than she has ever imagined.

Three black men rob a Knightsbridge Italian restaurant. But when the police are called and the robbery becomes a siege, the men find themselves in a situation out of their control.

A series of films from all over the world about our astonishing planet and the creatures that live on it. Combining natural history with an element of adventure, the series featured well-known naturalists such as Jane Goodall and Gerald Durrell, and the oceanographer Jacques Cousteau. Succeeded by The Natural World.

The lives of Bodie and Doyle, top agents for Britain's CI5 (Criminal Intelligence 5), and their controller, George Cowley. The mandate of CI5 was to fight terrorism and similar high-profile crimes. Cowley, a hard ex-MI5 operative, hand-picked each of his men. Bodie is a cynical ex-SAS paratrooper and mercenary whose nature ran to controlled violence, while his partner, Doyle, comes to CI5 from the regular police force, and is more of an open minded liberal. Their relationship is often contentious, but they are the top men in their field, and the ones to whom Cowley always assigned to the toughest cases.

Empire Road was a British television series, made by the BBC in 1978 and 1979. Written by Michael Abbensetts, the show ran for two seasons of eight episodes each. The series was the first British television series to be written, acted and directed predominantly by black artists. A soap opera, similar in format to Coronation Street, Empire Road depicted life for the African-Caribbean, East Indian and South Asian residents of a racially diverse street in the city of Birmingham. Prominent cast members included Norman Beaton, Corinne Skinner-Carter, Wayne Laryea, Joseph Marcell and Rudolph Walker. The programme also provided early TV exposure for Julie Walters who appeared in a few episodes. The series was made at BBC Pebble Mill with location work in the Handsworth area of Birmingham. The eponymously named theme song was recorded by Matumbi and also released as a single in 1978.

James Baldwin and Dick Gregory discuss the Civil Rights Movement in 1960s Great Britain.

BBC documentary focusing on a reggae concert held at Wembley Stadium in 1970 featuring the Pyramids, Pioneers, Black Faith, Millie, the Maytals, and Desmond Dekker. Includes interviews with DJ Mike Raven and producer Graham Goodall, who review the history and development of reggae.

Play for Today is a British television anthology drama series, produced by the BBC and transmitted on BBC1 from 1970 to 1984. During the run, more than three hundred programmes, featuring original television plays, and adaptations of stage plays and novels, were transmitted. The individual episodes were between fifty and a hundred minutes in duration.

A British-born younger son of an immigrant family from Trinidad finds himself adrift between two cultures.

A white, plantation owning family in Dominica waits for the return of the patriarch from WWI, but things change when he does. Its focus on the declining power of the white plantocracy on the island of Dominica between the war years, handled through the prism of an intimate family drama, has great depth while remaining accessible. The series was shot in its entirety in Dominica.

If you’re young, male and you live in the city, how do you prove yourself in the most materially comfortable country on earth? How do you show courage, daring, skill, strength? How do you prove you’re a man? If you’re a Masai Tribesman in Africa you kill a lion. If you’re an Aborigine boy, you go on walkabout, if you live in Dogtown, Los Angeles you ride a skateboard.

An in-depth look at Trinidad and Tobago's carnival through its turbulent history. African and East Indian rhthyms and rituals, combined with the European Mardi Gras celebration, have evolved into the spectacle of "mas" and music that erupts on the streets of Port of Spain on the two days preceding Lent.

A young man looks back over his unhappy marriage and struggles to come to terms with his wife's suicide.