Join us at Goldsmiths (Cinema, Richard Hoggart Building) for a special screening of Pauline Black: A 2-Tone Story followed by a Q+A session.
In a cinematic and visceral documentary mixing intimate archive and interviews and a storming soundtrack, Pauline Black, lead singer of 2-Tone hit band The Selecter, tells her life story in the context of a difficult upbringing and the 2-Tone music movement in 1979. Looking back, Pauline traces her music legacy, as well as how it is relevant to the world today, pushing the boundaries of gender, politics and racism. Pauline, of mixed Nigerian and Jewish heritage, was adopted into a white family in Essex in the 50’s. Her upbringing was defined by casual racism from within her own family. She went on to build positive routes in the Coventry 2-Tone music scene. The Selecter reflected on working-class life in Thatcher’s Britain, their music was social reportage with a commitment to anti-racism and anti-sexism.
Contributors in the film include: Arthur ‘Gaps’ Hendrickson, Don Letts, Skin, Damon Albarn, Rhoda Dakar, Lynval Golding, Mykaell Riley, Sonia Boyce and Jools Holland. Trailer https://youtu.be/cbE_8IXYm00
Professor Julian Henriques is convenor of the MA Cultural Studies programme, director of the Topology Research Unit and co-founder of Sound System Outernational research group in the Department of Media and Communications, Goldsmiths University. Julian researches street cultures, music and technologies including those of the reggae sound system. He has credits as a writer-director with the feature film Babymother, a reggae musical, the improvised short drama We the Ragamuffin and as a producer with numerous BBC and Channel Four documentaries; a sound artist with the sculpture Knots & Donuts at the Tate Modern, a founding editor with the Ideology & Consciousness journal and as an author with others Changing the Subject: Psychology, Social Regulation and Subjectivity and the monographs Sonic Bodies: Reggae Sound Systems Performance Techniques and Ways of Knowing, and Sonic Media: the Street Technology of the Jamaican Sound System (forthcoming).
Professor Nirmal Puwar is Co-Convenor of the MA Gender, Media and Culture programme, Co-director of the Centre for Feminist Research and Co-founder of the Methods Lab, Goldsmiths University. She is author of ‘Space Invaders: race, gender and bodies out of place’; which has a Special 20th anniversary Issue dedicated to it. Nirmal is co-editor of Live Methods (with Les Back), that has a 10th Anniversary Special Issue dedicated to it, in Sociological Review. Nirmal has led the way in creative methodologies, stretching the terms of knowledge and the walls of the academy, through a large number of collaborative projects, such as Noise of the Past (AHRC) and Multicultural Experiments in the Civic Life of the Cathedral (British Academy). Her forthcoming books are: One Mile Walk (Punctum Press), Hear Hear: Coventry Cathedral (Mattering Press) and Outsider Insiders (with Catherine Hahn and Siobhan McGuirk, MUP).
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