It's been amazing (and really quite moving!) to watch my Dad and his friends get into it about Lovers Rock on Facebook. So many of the critiques that are emerging revolve around issues of authenticity and detail—what it got “right” and what it got “wrong.”

This impulse is, I think, amplified by the gap in representation for Black British people on screen & the deficit in high-level opportunity for Black creators. You wait however many years for your era to be represented… and, hang on, they’d never play THIS song at a blues party!

I understand it. But—and because of the above contextual conditions—I’m slightly heartbroken by the notion that for this kind of work to be successful it has to exhibit some strict fidelity to a “truth” that is always going to be deeply subjective. Lovers Rock? A work of fiction!

Lovers Rock is not beyond critique—I have some of my own!—but it is, ultimately, a work of art. It is the product of a collaboration of people with subjective memories, with an implicit critique of nostalgia built-in.

A deliberately artificial fantasy/Cinderella story framework within which there lies a whole world of colour, sound, light, time, pace, rhythm. To be felt, to be experienced.

Again, it’s a work of art—of cinema!—by an extremely talented multidisciplinary artist, & I wish we were at a place where we could all really get into a work of art as art! Especially at a time when we’re being force fed so much pabulum with no genuine artistic vision guiding it.

Sorry I should have given a warning that that was going to be a whole opinion attack thread. To end, a repost of a few recs by me of pre-Lovers Rock Black British film! https://www.theguardian.com/film/2020/jun/19/from-pressure-to-the-last-tree-10-of-the-best-black-british-films