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It’s often said that filmmakers use their central characters as proxies. If that were true, then Horace Ové would have centered on Colin (Oscar James) in his landmark work of Black British cinema, Pressure. After all, like Colin, he was raised in Trinidad and moved to the UK. Instead, he centers on Colin’s brother Tony (Herbert Norville), the British-born son of West Indian immigrants struggling to find an identity as a young man rejected by the only nation he has ever known. Ové’s film – seen now as the first ever Black British feature film – was buried at the time as too controversial to release, but now returns with a 4K restoration from the BFI National Archive and the Film Foundation. – Richard Whittaker
