May 10, 2024
Drama
Horace Ove?s fiction-film debut marks a watershed in the history of British cinema: the nation?s first feature to be written and directed by a Black filmmaker and the first to focus on the perspective of Black characters. Ove and novelist Sam Selvon?s gritty script centers on teenage Tony (Herbert Norville), caught between his Trinidadian parents? (Lucita Lijertwood and Frank Singuineau) desire to attain middle-class respectability in London and his older brother Colin?s (Oscar James) urging to join the Black Power movement. After encountering racism while hanging out with a white girl and searching for employment, Tony finds comradeship with a group of aimless Caribbean boys, only to discover that their petty criminality is a dead end. Ove depicts Tony?s subsequent political awakening in captivating verite style as he realizes that taking on the system will invite not only violent police oppression but also a thorough examination of his own values and beliefs. Suffused with the political outrage and explosive rebellion of 1970s London, Pressure is a marvel of lived-in independent filmmaking that captures Black working-class solidarity while refusing easy solutions to social problems - like income disparity, juvenile delinquency, racial profiling - that remain relevant today.
Herbert Norville
/Actor
Frank Singuineau
/Actor
Lucita Lijertwood
/Actor
Sheila Scott Wilkinson
/Actor
T-Bone Wilson
/Actor
Ram John Holder
/Actor
Oscar James
/Actor
Ed Devereaux
/Actor
Horace Ove
/Director
Robert Buckler
/Producer