Reception for British Filmmaker Horace Ove
This spring and summer have been an especially busy one for BADWest. On May 26th we were on hand to receive Trinidadian- born documentary filmmaker and photographer Horace Ove at an informal reception at the Alitash Kebede Gallery, located in Los Angeles on LaBrea Ave’s gallery row. The reception, free and open to all filmmakers, was an opportunity during Ove’s brief visit in the U.S. to chat informally with the artist.
Born in 1939 in Trinidad, Horace Ove 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. He holds the Guinness World Record for the first Black British film-maker to direct a feature-length film, Pressure (1976), and has documented 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. In 2006 he was one of five winners of the £30,000 Paul Hamlyn Foundation Award for Visual Arts, and in 2007 was awarded a CBE, Commander of the British Empire, for his contributions to film in the UK.
Despite all these accolades, Mr. Ove remains quite humble, which was evident at the reception. In addition to chatting there with Mr. Ove, filmmakers had the opportunity to sample wine and cheese while viewing an exhibition of modern and contemporary work of artists from the African Diaspora, which gallery owner Alitash Kebede specializes in.
BADWest founder St. Clair Bourne was a friend of Ms. Kebede, and prior to his death, was exploring the possibility of screening works at her gallery. Ms. Kebede is interested in pursuing this working relationship with our organization, and as a result, BADWest is now planning a series of screenings in this lovely, intimate setting. There has been a resurgence of interest in Horace Ove’s race-related works, due to recent racial issues surfacing in the U.S. and the UK, and ideally we will screen one of his docs at the gallery in the future.
- Denise Hamilton
