A Focus on Skin

+ intro by season curator Xavier Alexandre Pillai

Skin’s documentary output chronicles some of the most important junctures of Black and Asian British life.

  • Total running time 114min

Skin: Attacks on Asians and West Indians

LWT 1980. Director Jon Guilbert. 27min. Digital

Skin: The Deptford Fire

LWT 1981. Director Jon Guilbert. 28min. Digital

Skin: After the Deptford Fire: A Watershed in British Relations

LWT 1981. Directors Trevor Hampton, David W. Rolfe. 25min. Digital

Skin: Immigrants and the National Health

LWT 1981. Director John Morgan. 24min. Digital

Black Britain appeared to exist as a parallel country. The things that many took for granted, such as schooling, protection and fair housing, were weaponised by the state and required constant community monitoring. Skin was a pioneer in multicultural non-fiction programming, which covered Black Britain across areas as diverse as education, state malfeasance, resistance to far-right group and immigration. The series pushed against engineered media narratives of the early 1980s, documenting uprisings and community resistance to right-wing terror campaigns, including searing coverage of what became known as the ‘New Cross massacre’.