Arsenal on Location: Pioneers of Black British Cinema - BURNING AN ILLUSION (UK 1981) von Menelik Shabazz

In cooperation with Arsenal on Location , City Kino Wedding is presenting the film series Pioneers of Black British Cinema from June 27 to 29, 2025 with groundbreaking cinematic works created between the 70s and 90s. At this time, filmmakers such as Horace Ové, Ngozi Onwurah, Menelik Shabazz, John Akomfrah and Isaac Julien increasingly succeeded in questioning the prevailing ideologies of the (white) film and television industry and confronting them with alternative images of a "Black Britain". The selection of five film programs takes into account intersectional perspectives and confrontations with the (post)colonial history of Great Britain.

Further program information: https://www.arsenal-berlin.de/kino/filmreihe/city-kino-wedding-pioneers-of-black-british-cinema/

Saturday, June 28, 2025, 8 p.m.
BURNING AN ILLUSION (UK 1981) by Menelik Shabazz

The feature film debut of Barbadian-born filmmaker Menelik Shabazz (1954-2021) was the second feature film by a black director in the UK after Horace Ové's PRESSURE. Also shot in Notting Hill and Ladbroke Grove, the founder of the Ceddo Film and Video Workshop chose a social realist approach to portray the realities of life in "Black Britain" from a female perspective. The plot centers on 22-year-old office worker Pat (Cassie McFarlane), who longs for a conventional life as a married middle-class woman. But when she begins a relationship with the charismatic but moody Del (Victor Romero Evans) and he is imprisoned after a violent confrontation with the police, she becomes increasingly interested in the Black Power movement. Shabazz's BURNING AN ILLUSION was made as a reaction to the socio-political tensions of the 70s and 80s under Margaret Thatcher's new conservative government.

German premiere of the BFI's 2K restoration.