Since 2008, the Wimbledon Film Club has screened 17 films to celebrate Black History Month.

Going forward we have decided to include more films by Black filmmakers throughout our programme, rather than just in October. For example, we are screening the Zambian film On Becoming a Guinea Fowl next week.

Now is a good time to look back on previous BHM screenings as part of our celebration of the WFC’s first 20 years.

Documentaries

6 of the films have been documentaries, including Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975 and The Stuart Hall Project. In fact, the first three films we screened for Black History month were all documentaries: Diaspora Diaries, Sequins Soca and Sweat, and Good Hair.

American Drama

6 of the films have been made in the USA, and most of those have been dramas reflecting not only the range of Black experience in America but its changing representation in cinema, from Imitation of Life (1959) through In the Heat of the Night (1967) to Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing (1989).

The Wider World

Our programme is increasingly international and this has been reflected both in the choice of recent BHM films, such as last year’s Io Capitano, and the tendency to screen more Black experience films across the season.