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Tense, graphic experimental short film portraying police brutality inside a jail cell.

Drama 1965 5 mins

Overview

This experimental short film uses a jarring percussion soundtrack and graphic imagery to explore police brutality and institutional racism. Joseph Layode plays a black man who is brutally beaten by a uniformed white man with a truncheon. When a white man (Mike Anglesey) enters the cell and extends his hands to Layode, they are violently struck apart by the truncheon. This intense, frenetic film cuts to the quick with its head-on confrontation of the violence of racism.

This challenging short was produced by the London School of Film Technique (later the London Film School), and directed by Philip Mottram, who subsequently spent many years teaching at the school.