PODCAST | Sarah Bradbury interviews Rubika Shah, director of the film White Riot.

To listen to the interview, click on the ► icon on the right, just above the picture

British director, Rubika Shah, told us about her film White Riot and winning the BFI London Film Festival award for Best Documentary. She explained the long process that went into making the film and how she sees the landscape now for female filmmakers.

White Riot: Revolution rock! Rubika Shah’s vital documentary profiles punky reggae protest movement Rock Against Racism, from grassroots beginnings through to a major multicultural event. 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.

To discover more about the film, click here.