WHITE RIOT (feature film)

Still: Syd Shelton

BAFTA Longlist 2021 - Outstanding Debut by a British Writer, Director and Producer

British Independent Film Awards 2021 - Best Documentary (nominated)

Winner Best Documentary - BFI London Film Festival 2019

Special Mention Crystal Bear - Berlin International Film Festival 2020

Sound & Vision Official Selection - CPH:DOX 2020

Special Mention DocFilmMusic Competition - Krakow Film Festival 2020

Winner IndieMusic Award - IndieLisboa International Film Festival 2020

Dir Rubika Shah
Prod Ed Gibbs
Scr Ed Gibbs, Rubika Shah
With Red Saunders, Roger Huddle, Kate Webb
UK
2019
80min
Sales Visit Films

Expanding her 2017 short, Rubika Shah’s energising film charts a vital London protest movement. Rock Against Racism (RAR) was formed in 1976, prompted by ‘music’s biggest colonialist’ Eric Clapton and his support of racist MP Enoch Powell. White Riot blends fresh interviews with queasy archive footage to recreate a hostile environment of anti-immigrant hysteria and National Front marches. As neo-Nazis recruited the nation’s youth, RAR’s multicultural punk and reggae gigs provided rallying points for resistance. As founder Red Saunders explains: ‘We peeled away the Union Jack to reveal the swastika’. The campaign grew from Hoxton fanzine roots to 1978’s huge antifascist carnival in Victoria Park, featuring X-Ray Spex, Steel Pulse and of course The Clash, whose rock star charisma and gale-force conviction took RAR’s message to the masses.

(Manish Agarwal)