The 35 and 16mm films that Maureen Blackwood made between 1986 and 1994 seem to have fallen under the radar of recent discussions of black British directors and UK-based feminist filmmakers - with the exception of The Passion of Remembrance (1986), Sankofa’s debut feature that she wrote and co-directed with the artist Isaac Julien.

Driven by two distinct storylines, the first centring on the black family in eighties London, surviving against a backdrop of economic depression, diverse protests (police brutality against Black people, gay rights, Greenham Common) and Black gay life. The other - revisits the black US and UK gender politics of the sixties/seventies played out like verbal combat in an unspecified remote location.

The result is a rigorous and passionate fusion of formal narrative and aesthetic experimentation.

35mm print c/o BFI with thanks to Maureen Blackwood

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