Horace Ove

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Horace Ové born 1939 in Trinidad, is a British filmmaker, painter and writer and one of the leading black independent film-makers to emerge in Britain since the post-war period.

Ové holds the Guinness World Record for the first Black British film-maker to direct a feature-length film, Pressure (1976). In its retrospective history, “100 Years of Cinema”, the British Film Institute (BFI) declared, “Horace Ové is undoubtedly a pioneer in Black British history and his work provides a perspective on the Black experience in Britain.” Pressure, which tells the story of a London teenager who joins the Black Power movement in 1970s, was banned for two years by its own backers, the British Film Institute, before being released two years later to wide acclaim.

Breaking into film as a (slave) extra in the 1963 Joseph L. Mankiewicz' epic Cleopatra, Horace went on to build a prolific and sometimes controversial career as a filmmaker. Documenting racism and the Black Power movement in Britain over many decades through photography and in films such as Baldwin’s Nigger (1968) or Pressure and Dream to Change the World (2003). His documentaries such as Reggae (1971) and The Skateboard Kings have also become models for emerging filmmakers.

Horace’s TV work has included a series of The Professionals (“A Man Called Quinn,” 1981) and more recently, The Equaliser, a drama about the 1919 Amritsar Massacre that won him two Indian Academy Awards (see →IIFA Awards?) in 1996.

Ové's 1987 film, Playing Away starring Norman Beaton, is perhaps his most well known work. The film centers around the residents of fictional British village Sneddington, who invite the “Caribbean Brixton Conquistadors” (from South London) for a cricket match to commemorate “African Famine Week.” [1]

Ové acknowledges influences from African-American political leaders of the 1960s and 1970s like Malcolm X and Stokeley Carmichael but is disparaging of contemporary black politics in Britain. He says: “In black British politics there are still lot of things that are missing, that are not said.” [2]

In 2006 he was one of five winners of the £30,000 Paul Hamlyn Foundation Award for Visual Arts [3] [4].

In 2007 he was awarded a CBE, Commander of the British Empire, for his contributions to film in the UK.