I have been asked many times why I decided to make a film about Sean Rigg. The answer is simple – it was impossible not to. I have a history of making films with a collective called Migrant Media and all of those films follow the struggles of families and communities against injustice and human rights abuses. In 2001 we released a feature documentary called ‘Injustice’ that looked at the deaths of a number of young black men in police custody. The film became very controversial when police officers attempted to suppress it, claiming it was libelous and eventually, after a long battle, the film made an international breakthrough when CNN picked up the story. ‘Injustice’ went onto a cinema release, won many festival prizes and helped to force a reform of the investigation process into custody deaths. Since then we have been filming a follow up to ‘Injustice’ which is due for completion next year, but the Rigg case demanded a film of its own, purely because of the resilient campaign that Sean’s family undertook for justice. After spending some time investigating the IPCC it became clear to us that the organisation has utterly failed in its duty in the Rigg case, the question is why?

Without going into great detail, the IPCC investigation was shoddy to say the least. Incompetence, or perhaps complicity, led to fatal errors in the investigation, too numerous to mention. The initial involvement of the IPCC was to put out a press statement – later retracted after complaints from the family – that Sean had died in Kings College Hospital and had only passed through the police station. In August this year, four years after Sean’s death, this attempt at deflection ended in public humiliation for the IPCC when the jury took the unprecedented step of striking out the hospital name from the record. Instead they marked down the place of death as ‘Brixton Police Station’ – that was clear to anybody who saw the CCTV footage which showed the last moments of Sean’s life ebbing away as he lay on the custody cage floor with officers surrounding him. The damning inquest verdict was only possible because of empirical analysis of endless hours of CCTV footage by Sean’s siblings Wayne, Samantha and Marcia. The inquest exposed the actions, and ensuing lies, of the police officers involved in this horrific case because of the tenaciousness of the Riggs and their legal team, led by barrister Leslie Thomas and solicitor Daniel Machover. This has now led to new charges being considered for perjury against two of the police officers in the case who openly lied in court. Whether there will be any further charges to officers in relation to Sean’s brutal death remains to be seen, but if it had been left in the hands of the IPCC this case would have been closed long ago.

‘Who Policies The Police?’ raises deep questions about the proximity of the IPCC and the police but it also offers some answers. When people watch the film they are shocked at how poor the IPCC investigation into Sean’s death was, but sadly this is very typical. The IPCC was formed after the PCA (Police Complaints Authority) had been thoroughly discredited because of a lack of independence in its investigating police misconduct and wrong doing. The Rigg case is one of many others we have filmed since 2003, in its early days the IPCC indicated some improvements but these were minimal and the situation today is that the IPCC is untenable. The answer as to whether it is worth saving and how it should function rests in the hands of the Rigg family and the families of many hundreds of others that have died since the IPCC was created. My perspective on what is needed is that, whatever its name and whoever staffs it, the organisation must be able to undertake robust and rigorous investigations, as in these cases we are dealing with the most serious abuses of power by police officers, and they need to be dealt with in a proper manner. Officers that commit serious crimes need to receive serious punishment, including going to jail. This is a minimum requirement for the bereaved and will also bring about a reduction in custody deaths. There can be no more effective deterrent than a prison cell to a police officer that uses violence instead of using their brain. The current ‘get out of jail’ card that officers carry in their pocket needs to be taken out of the equation.

Over the four years since Sean’s death, and while we were making the film, the family of Sean Rigg became investigators because the IPCC failed to do the job. It cannot be right when members of the public are forced to undertake the role that state bodies like the IPCC is tasked to do. The families of those that die in police custody simply want a proper investigation in the way that we all would if somebody we knew died, but because the police are implicated, involved and – in some cases – responsible for these deaths, the rules change, collusion seeps in and evidence is tainted. It’s clear that there are many people in the community that could do a more thorough job than the existing IPCC commissioners and investigators.

There has been a very sustained period of criticism of the IPCC from its handling of the investigation into the shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes in 2005 to the more recent Mark Duggan case last year. Currently there are a number of reviews, internal and external, of the IPCC partly brought on by the Rigg inquest which exposed what amounts to criminal negligence in its handling of the Rigg investigation. The new IPCC head, Anne Owers, has launched an offensive, but it’s unclear to what purpose. Evidence is being gathered and many individuals and lobbying groups are making submissions. The IPCC has entered a period of chronic public and political scrutiny brought on by it’s own unforgivable lack of vigour and an inability to perform its functions in an independent manner. In the meantime deaths in police custody, and their investigations, are continuing under its remit.

‘Who Policies The Police?’ is an investigation of the Rigg case but it’s also a much wider exploration of the issues involved, and the use of experimental techniques and poetry allow a more personal, and political response. The film is now making a contribution to a much larger debate and a number of media organisations have been forced to wake up and look at this issue.

‘Injustice’ took seven years to make; this film was made over a four-year period. We normally follow a method of process journalism where we spend time with characters and stories, get involved and also move the story along. This dedication leads to powerful results but it’s also a very time consuming form of filmmaking that requires political commitment, a rare commodity in the media world.

Despite the huge respect and international success of our work, our position, approach and style is very out of favour with UK broadcasters, and since we made ‘Injustice’, which the BBC and Channel 4 still refuse to transmit, we have had to finance all of our own work, as the broadcasters refuse to commission us. No wonder deaths in police custody have gone unabated for the last forty years; television has rarely brought it up in any sustained way. There have been a handful of programmes since we took the groundbreaking steps with ‘Injustice’ but they have not been challenging or critical enough. Is it sour grapes with Channel 4 on our part? Perhaps so, but we have a right to be angry given their cowardly refusal to screen ‘Injustice’ which is surely now in the national interest given the revelations about police misconduct in and after Hillsborough. If only our broadcasters would show the same courage that the Riggs have, as well as all the other campaigning families, support groups and legal teams, then perhaps we could feel a little prouder of them.

‘Who Polices The Police?’ is showing on the Migrant Media film site at https://vimeo.com/user6137135

‘We are all products of our environment’. The tagline of Ben Drew’s (aka musician Plan B) debut film suggests viewers might expect a realistic, polemical account of life on the periphery of Britain’s underclass. Ill Manors, however, fails to interrogate the antagonistic oppressive political system that ushers in the social ills featured, including the illicit drugs trade, gun and knife crime, and prostitution. The film represents a missed opportunity and is a frustrating watch: at this point in time, it could and should have made a potent political impact.

In his essay ‘Narrate or Describe’, philosopher Georg Lukacs clarifies the distinction between naturalism and realism in literature. Naturalism is detail-oriented, but shows no grasp of the social dynamics of the life it is portraying. Realism explores social relationships within a narrative structure that allows contradictions within the fictional world to build into revealing action. Ill Manors fits firmly in the naturalism corner: is it pure description.

The film, set over seven days on a council estate in Forest Gate, features six interweaving stories about eight characters connected to the drugs trade.

The action revolves around Aaron (Riz Ahmend) and his best friend Ed (Ed Skrein), who have both been raised in foster care. The two become embroiled in a vicious moneymaking scheme to retrieve a stolen phone that begins with prostitution and ends, shockingly, with the sale of an abandoned new-born baby. Set to a soundtrack of urgent hip-hop music, which gives backstory to the characters, we see Forest Gate inhabitants trying to succeed, survive, and liberate themselves from their circumstances, with tragic consequences.

Drew recently told The Guardian that his characters ‘act the way they do because of the shit that happened to them that wasn’t their fault’. Yet, while the surface details of the world feel accurate, the acting is strong and the narrative structure and themes interesting, Ill Manors ultimately represents a crisis of working class morality, as opposed to a critique of ineffective political agendas. It is ‘gritty’ drama in a social vacuum.

Notably absent are the political institutions marginalising the working class every day. The characters seem to exist in a context untouched by austerity cuts. There’s no interaction between the kids and the authorities at school and viewers are left wondering about teachers’ attitudes to their students. Unemployment is not even touched upon, and there’s little sense of characters being embedded in the socio-political climate that forces entry into the drugs trade. Shamefully, the setting fits nicely into a particular political ideology that already regards council estates as natural habitats for theft, drug dealing and abuse, benefit fraud, youth delinquency and financial improvidence.

The characters’ living environment is not enviable, but this language of realism neglects the distinctive injustices faced by those trapped in marginalised, crime-ridden housing estates. Instead, it emphasises some of the ills these people face while ignoring other, more lasting harms; substandard housing, class discrimination, and police harassment and abuse motivated by racial animus.

Drew is not the first, or only filmmaker to offer a problematic portrayal of working-class existence. But his approach comes at a significant cost. The exaggerated behaviour of a demographic, regarded by some Conservatives as the genesis of social problems, will distort the genuine political issue of social exclusion. Worse, by staying above the fray of socio-political and ideological conflict, the film seems to have commanded guilty yet unequivocal applause from liberal sectors.

Worryingly, the film is being held up as the article of faith by commentators seeking to contextualise social problems. Camila Batmanghelidjh, the founder of Kids Company suggests in The Observer that Ill Manors is ‘an incredibly accurate portrait’ of the lower reaches of British society. Decca Aitkenhead in The Guardian confidently states that, ‘social commentators are already talking about its political significance, and reviewing last year’s riots through the prism of its lens.’ However, it is impossible to subscribe to either assertion when considering the films semantics.

Ill Manors provides voyeuristic material to an educated, liberal and middle-class audience. Cinematically and conceptually, the film shifts energy and intention away from thinking via visible political and institutional frameworks and into the socio-cultural domain. This is where social inequality is defined by delinquent behaviour, cultural abstractions and financial improvidence. The approach to the various social issues, which now fall under the derogatory label of ‘the underclass’, encourages us to believe that the worst social injury these people suffer are self-inflicted.

Film is more than just a visual experience. It has the capacity to affect political imagination. This is why we find filmic political engagement so compelling. But in order to achieve this, we need to look to the details of political institutions and public policy. The important opposition is between government and society, not the individual and his or her moral or cultural code. It’s clear that Drew is trying to create a consciousness, but effort alone is not enough.

What is needed is solid political justice, not intellectual handwringing over the behavioural aspects of the supposed underclass. The narrative message that personal (mis)behaviour determines life’s opportunities smacks of the pervasive Tory discourse of meritocracy. Such arguments reduce lived reality to a conflict between the working-class and their behavioural decisions. The landscape of social inequality in Coalition Britain is much more complex than that.

You can find the official website for Ill Manors at: http://www.illmanors.com/#scene-0

This is an important victory for all those campaigning against the systemic nature of corporate tax-avoidance. An estimated $11 trillion is stashed away in tax havens by the world’s richest (more like the 0.001 per cent than the 1 per cent) to avoid paying tax to national governments. Indeed the Goldman Sachs tax deal is a tiny drop in the ocean of corporate tax avoidance, as a new film produced by UK Uncut’s Daniel Garvin about the impact of the cuts and the alternative shows.

The Missing Billions is a 24-minute documentary interposing hard-hitting facts and figures of tax evasion and the UK coalition government’s cuts with narratives from those affected – from a disabled campaigner describing the devastating reality of cuts for the most vulnerable to those fighting to save public services in their communities. It underlines the unpalatable reality of living in a society governed by a political elite that spends £850 billion bailing out the banks and then forces the public to pay for it.

But it is not all doom and gloom. The Missing Billions highlights both the very real alternative and the struggle that is being fought against the cuts. It demonstrates how, if there was the will from the political elite, there is certainly a way to avoid cuts to public services. In the film John Christensen, of the Tax Justice Network, explains how tax havens represent a fundamental contradiction of globalised capitalism – whilst corporations and the finance industry operate in a deregulated global economy, tax systems are enforced nationally. Thus, multinational companies gain ever increasing profits whilst paying ever diminishing tax bills. In just 24 minutes this film outlines how rather than imposing austerity governments could crack down on tax avoidance and evasion.

The outcome of UK Uncut’s legal case against the £20 million tax avoidance of Goldman Sachs will set a precedent for future legal action against tax evasion. To understand the significance of this case everyone should watch this brilliant new film.

You can watch The Missing Billions here http://vimeo.com/44017057

Visit www.ukuncutlegalaction.org.uk to read more about the campaign, donate to support their legal costs or to order hard copy DVDs of the film.

See end of review for chance to win La Grande Illusion on DVD

In the canon of war cinema, Jean Renoir’s La Grande Illusion is a rarity: a film with no fighting, where the frontline is never seen. A brilliant work whose only real moment of violence is the shooting of a prancing man armed with nothing but a flute, it depicts the fragility and resilience of human relationships in the absurdity of war.
La Grande Illusion tells the tale of a band of French soldiers captured as prisoners of war by German forces during WWI. At the centre of the drama is a trio of characters who embody the French tricolore; markedly different, they are at once an acknowledgement of the divisions in French society and a hopeful rallying cry of fraternité.
Maréchal is a straight-talking and rough-edged Parisian, loyal and with a common touch. His unlikely companion is de Boeldieu, an aristocratic captain aloof from his comrades who observes social formalities until the end. Finally there is Rosenthal, a banker from a rich Jewish immigrant family, a man whose opulence and generosity never deserts him – even behind enemy lines.
Defiance of the genre’s clichés is the hallmark of Renoir’s masterpiece. In a refreshing departure from the mould of war films, the enemy Boche are not portrayed as universally villainous. Artur, the camp guard, is stern but not cruel; he speaks with sincerity when he wishes the departing prisoners ‘see their wives soon’.

When Maréchal is thrown into solitary confinement, his sole comforter is an elderly German guard, who, after offering the despairing prisoner cigarettes and a harmonica in a gesture of consolation, can only utter ‘this war has gone on too long’. The intention is deeply anti-nationalistic.
In a similar manner, Renoir dispenses with the traditional cinematic conventions of narrative. In place of a single linear plot leading to a climax, the film is devised in three connected episodes. Alongside the themes of loneliness and boredom, this format injects a dose of realism. First, our heroes find themselves in the confines of a largely agreeable POW camp, where in comedic fashion they plan their escape, only to be foiled at the last minute. This is followed by their removal to a higher security facility due to multiple attempts at escape – all of which unseen by the audience – and then finally by Maréchal and Rosenthal’s comic and tortuous route to escape.

With a deft touch, Renoir uses The Great War as a prism through which to view other changes that coursed through Europe’s social fabric during this era of upheaval. Although the cross-section of French society in the POW barracks borders on caricature at times, it is revealing of class tensions and divisions in society which most war films gloss over in favour of a cheap and easy patriotism.
Perhaps the greatest poignancy comes in the rapport struck up between de Boeldieu and German general Rauffenstein. The pair share a common cultural grounding and solidarity through their aristocratic backgrounds, but a painful dissonance emerges due to their captor-prisoner relationship. Here, Renoir laments the dying of a gentlemanly nobility whose illusion of a shared heritage is dashed by the hard pragmatism of modern warfare; a symbol of the wind of political change shaking Old Europe to its roots.
An entertaining and moving work, La Grande Illusion eschews both jingoism and the smug morality of the victor to convey a subtle, yet powerful, anti-war message. In this end this comes not through barbarism, torture or atrocity, but by tearing down the illusory barrier that war creates between adversaries.
A digital restoration of La Grande Illusion was released by StudioCanal on DVD and Blu-ray on 23 April.
Red Pepper has three copies of the DVD  to give away. Simply email office@redpepper.org.uk with “Grand Illusion Prize” in the subject line. Closing date: 3 May. Winners will be selected at random.

Led by Lord Chris Smith, and backed by Downtown Abbey creator and Tory Peer Julian Fellows, the Review has been framed around the transatlantic success of the King’s Speech. It argues that public money, via National Lottery funding, should be directed to film projects that will rival the commercial success of the “best international productions”.

Cameron stated that, “our role, and that of the BFI, should be to support the sector in becoming even more dynamic and entrepreneurial, helping UK producers to make commercially successful pictures.” Social realist film director Ken Loach publicly criticized Cameron’s conclusions on BBC Breakfast, also prior to the publication of the review. Loach said: “We do not have, as in other countries in Europe, a wide spread of independent cinemas. Now, unless you can really see a wide variety of films you don’t have a vibrant film industry and we get a very narrow menu.”

In effect, Cameron wants the film industry to serve as the government’s international relations agency, selling the rest of the world an ideal version of Britishness as seen in A King’s Speech, An Education (2009) and the lamentably apolitical The Iron Lady (2011). His words have little to do with cultural entrepreneurialism, and everything to do with the politics of his own survival.

A narrow menu

The suggestion that the industry is afflicted with a poverty of commercial ambition is a narrow analysis of British cinema.  The films of Loach, Mike Leigh and more recently Shane Meadows and Andrea Arnold, represent a triumph of critical success over commerciality. It’s this very diversity of British film that makes it successful. To declare that potential film projects in the UK should now be funded on the subtle premise of revenue forecasting goes against the very raison d’être of cinema.

Commercial viability can never be the axis around which an entire film industry can operate. Unless the industry can provide funding for low budget, or “risky” projects, which the burden of purely profit-making goals will stymie, young British filmmakers and screenwriters will be unable to develop their talents. It will also push the very best of our established filmmakers to look to Europe for funding, or be reduced to subverting their own work in order to survive under the new regime.

Film is a commodity that cannot exist in isolation from its paymasters. And there must be present a correlation between a film and an audience’s willingness to pay for it. But what is at issue goes beyond the commercial viability of projects to be funded by the British Film Institute, and the example of the King’s Speech speaks volumes about a possible wider agenda at play: it telegraphs a tranquil version of the British experience to America via a cultural discourse, at a time when British social life is anything but serene.

In this new era of film funding in Britain, heritage filmmaking will bloom, tended to by a government hanging on to its authority. The viewing public will be presented with an ideal, particular vision of national identity. Making Britain proud of its heritage will become a survival stratagem. Heritage films can and should have their place. But there must be equilibrium.

We need a holistic approach to cultivating a British film culture that fully represents and serves the society it draws its funding from. It must be a cinema that is commercially successful, but also one that expresses society and actively participates in it.

Silencing dissent

With the government actively encouraging a specific brand of film, it will became harder for emerging filmmakers, who cannot appeal for funding abroad, to go against the grain. Cameron’s words will become the perfect mitigation for a film industry already weary of funding film projects with concrete social engagement. The few films of this period that may allude to social reality will be heavily depoliticised, lest they bring the nation into disrepute. Loach has every reason to be concerned. The potential sacrificial lambs of the review’s policy recommendations are obvious.

The aspect of social criticism in films by Loach, Leigh, Meadows and Arnold certainly needs to be taken into consideration in an analysis of Cameron’s comments. Loaches’ characters are victims of their social circumstances, and his depiction of working class life provides an indication of what is transpiring politically, implicating the government through their policies as wilful allies of the status quo. But commercial success is rarely achieved by filmmakers wishing to adhere to political reality rather than popularism.

The 1980’s was a decade marred by political disquiet and anxiety under the Tories, and this was articulated by a group of distinctively anti-Thatcherite films. And while the turmoil of this decade will spur filmmakers to indulge in politics, under the proposals in the review, the industry may no longer allow such transgressions.

sions.