PODCAST | Sarah Bradbury interviews Head of Jury for documentary film Yance Ford.

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

African-American director and producer Yance Ford tells us about leading the jury to decide on Best Documentary Film at the BFI London Film Festival from the red carpet at the LFF awards. He spoke about the plethora of films presented, why they chose White Riot for the prize and how the documentary world can set an example to fiction film in terms of diversity in front and behind the camera.

White Riot won Best Documentary: 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.