:01:57. > :02:02.This programme contains some strong language. Hello and welcome to The
:02:02. > :02:06.Culture Show from Mac Birmingham! Tonight we've got the female future
:02:06. > :02:08.of rap - the maverick male artist who's making critical waves - and
:02:08. > :02:17.the must-see movie that's setting the festival circuit on fire Coming
:02:17. > :02:20.up: The art of Rashid Johnson. The rap of Angel Haze. The movie you
:02:20. > :02:30.need to be name-checking - Beasts of the Southern Wild. And what's a
:02:30. > :02:30.
:02:30. > :02:36.Blackta? First - it's swept up prizes at Cannes and Sundance, and
:02:36. > :02:40.now Beasts of the Southern Wild is being tipped for an Oscar too. Not
:02:40. > :02:43.bad for a movie made by a first time director with a miniature
:02:43. > :02:51.budget and an untrained, unknown cast. Mark Kermode took the film
:02:51. > :02:56.producer Mark Boothe to see it. day the storm is going to blow. The
:02:56. > :03:01.waters will rise up so high, there ain't going to be no bathtub, just
:03:01. > :03:11.a whole bunch of water. Beasts of the Southern Wild blends fantasy
:03:11. > :03:18.
:03:18. > :03:26.and realism to create a powerful metaphor for a post-Katrina South.
:03:26. > :03:31.The reserves are tested by a near biblical storm. Still searching for
:03:32. > :03:37.the mother who swam away long ago, she must face her father's failing
:03:37. > :03:43.health to survive the natural disaster that has engulfed her home.
:03:43. > :03:53.While at the 56th BFI London Film Festival, the director told us
:03:53. > :03:54.
:03:54. > :03:57.about working with the child star. It is about what it is like to go
:03:57. > :04:02.through these catastrophes, but go through it at the age of six where
:04:02. > :04:06.it is not a political issue, it is not an environmental issue, it is
:04:06. > :04:11.an emotional issue where you see your home disappear, where you see
:04:11. > :04:15.your parent disappear. How it feels to go through that and how you
:04:15. > :04:18.conquer that with a spirit. So just having someone that young, there is
:04:18. > :04:24.a purity to the way that a six- year-old thinks and the way that
:04:24. > :04:34.they act. It is about, it is purely about love and emotion. She had
:04:34. > :04:42.
:04:42. > :04:51.that. I'm your daddy. Argh! Who the man? I'm the man! Mark Boothe works
:04:51. > :04:56.with emerging artists concerned with the moving image. In 2004, he
:04:56. > :05:01.co-produced Bullet Boy which netted the lead actor an independent film
:05:01. > :05:04.award for most promising newcomer. I was interested to find out what
:05:04. > :05:08.he thought of Beasts of the Southern Wild. This is a film that
:05:08. > :05:12.has wowed audiences. Does it deserve the praise? I think it does.
:05:12. > :05:21.When you understand how this film was made, through an amazing
:05:21. > :05:28.process and journey of working in the heart of the community,
:05:28. > :05:35.crafting an amazing story. It's a Festival film and deserves the
:05:35. > :05:39.praise. But also I think in a wider sense of film-making, certainly new
:05:39. > :05:44.talent. There is an argument for saying it is partly authored by the
:05:44. > :05:49.cast. In the case of the father, he was not an actor, he was cast from
:05:49. > :05:56.the local bakery. He has said himself, "I lived through Katrina
:05:56. > :06:06.and that is what I bring to the screen." It is his story. Yes. I
:06:06. > :06:07.
:06:07. > :06:13.think that that really interesting convergence of storytelling along
:06:13. > :06:18.with a more dramatic approach. You tap into something very different.
:06:18. > :06:24.The fact that they took six months and went through five, something
:06:24. > :06:31.like 4,000 kids to find the lead character, it is amazing. The idea
:06:31. > :06:36.that that search took place in the community itself. As you say, to
:06:36. > :06:42.find Dwight Henry, that idea about someone of the community being able
:06:42. > :06:49.to tell a story, that relates directly to their own experience.
:06:49. > :06:53.In a way, adding another layer of authenticity that we rarely get to
:06:53. > :07:03.see. The whole universe depends on everything fitting together just
:07:03. > :07:15.
:07:15. > :07:23.right. I think that blend of the post-Katrina aftermath and what
:07:23. > :07:32.goes with any devastation - floods, tsunamis, it is all there. We have
:07:32. > :07:40.seen first-hand what happens when a community that is so displaced from
:07:40. > :07:50.modernity are equally affected by the forces of nature. And the
:07:50. > :07:58.
:07:58. > :08:05.problems created by our own abuse I see everything that made me.
:08:05. > :08:15.Flying around in invisible pieces. I see I'm a little piece of a big,
:08:15. > :08:15.
:08:15. > :08:20.big universe. You have a movie that comes out that is totally left-
:08:20. > :08:27.field and compounds everything. It provides not only a fresh benchmark,
:08:27. > :08:31.but also inspiration to many other film-makers who don't want to
:08:31. > :08:36.follow the traditional commercial Hollywood path. Thank you very much.
:08:36. > :08:43.Cheers. Beasts of the Southern Wild is
:08:43. > :08:46.released on the 19th of October. Now the rap of Angel Haze has been
:08:47. > :08:50.setting the web ablaze - but she says she wants to be a rock star,
:08:50. > :08:53.not a rap star, on the grounds that the former have more fun. Whichever
:08:53. > :09:03.she ends up becoming, she's destined to be huge. Miranda Sawyer
:09:03. > :09:10.
:09:10. > :09:17.went to meet her: Angel Haze can do nasty, romantic and she can do
:09:17. > :09:27.philosophical. With her rapid-fire lyrics, she already owns New York,
:09:27. > :09:29.
:09:29. > :09:32.now she has come over here to stake her claim on the UK. Welcome to The
:09:32. > :09:37.Culture Show. Hip-hop is a confident environment. Do you feel
:09:37. > :09:40.like you are the best? Yeah. Totally. I'm going to keep being
:09:40. > :09:50.the best until someone decides they want to be better than me. It is
:09:50. > :09:59.
:09:59. > :10:02.not going to happen any time soon. Hip-hop can suffer from really
:10:02. > :10:06.strong stereotypes, particularly with women. Yeah. Do you try and
:10:07. > :10:11.break out of that? Do you play with those games? No. For me, it is just
:10:11. > :10:15.a matter of being myself. Some people can refuse to play the game
:10:15. > :10:22.and change it by doing so. With me, it is always like just be you.
:10:22. > :10:26.do you find being compared with people like Nicki Minaj? I think
:10:26. > :10:34.that's hip-hop culture for you. Everybody gets compared to someone.
:10:34. > :10:41.When Nicki Minaj came out, she was compared to Foxy Brown. It is a
:10:41. > :10:45.rite of passage. # I don't need no friends... #
:10:45. > :10:52.Explain about your background. grew up in Michigan. I was in a
:10:52. > :10:57.cult. It is so weird to say "cult" because every time I say it I get
:10:57. > :11:06.this look. I couldn't do the simplest things ever. Everything I
:11:06. > :11:15.did had to revolve around church and God and hell... What was it
:11:15. > :11:21.called? Love, Peace and The Holy Ghost. Where was your dad? He died
:11:21. > :11:27.before I was born. That is a tough mixed-up childhood? Yeah. Was there
:11:27. > :11:31.any music you heard within that cult? Was it just hymns? Yeah.
:11:31. > :11:37.LAUGHTER You can sing one if you want! I hate them. No contemporary
:11:37. > :11:42.music? No. It was considered secular. If you listened to it, you
:11:42. > :11:46.were going to hell. Did I grew up in a house I couldn't even pick up
:11:46. > :11:50.a play-phone, they would say it was the devil talking to you. You were
:11:50. > :11:54.cursed. You couldn't do a lot of stuff. What was it like when you
:11:54. > :12:04.first heard music? What was the first track you heard? The first
:12:04. > :12:07.
:12:07. > :12:12.hip-hop song was Meet Me In The Trap. I started listening to Eminem.
:12:12. > :12:16.Like, I like to think that I shaped myself after those type of artists
:12:16. > :12:21.where you go through something with them on song and it means something.
:12:21. > :12:24.How old were you when you discovered these artists? 16. Four
:12:25. > :12:32.years ago! When did you start rapping? A year after that, 17.
:12:32. > :12:37.That was a quick learning curve? Yes. That was one year? I'm a type
:12:37. > :12:42.of person, when I see something, I have to learn about it. I was
:12:42. > :12:52.learning what word play was and learning what all of it meant. And
:12:52. > :12:52.
:12:52. > :12:57.delving into the root of all of it. In America, there's like a whole
:12:57. > :13:00.entire cycle to, like, colour, race, gender, all that stuff. If you
:13:00. > :13:06.understand the laws of it all, you understand how it works, you
:13:06. > :13:13.understand how to bypass it. But in America, it is so difficult to be
:13:13. > :13:20.black. # I'm running through the jungle...
:13:20. > :13:30.Can I ask you a question? After being through the experience you
:13:30. > :13:34.have been with your mum, do you believe in God now? Sometimes.
:13:34. > :13:38.Sometimes. I think it is objective with me. Like, without a belief in
:13:38. > :13:44.God, I don't think I would be here this far. So sometimes I do and
:13:44. > :13:49.sometimes I'm like, yeah, no, it is too much, it is too time-consuming
:13:49. > :13:56.for me. I could be living and stuff. That's good. Sometimes I do,
:13:56. > :14:06.sometimes I don't. # You can hit it till your nose
:14:06. > :14:13.
:14:13. > :14:16.Angel Haze's debut LP Reservation is available now. Next tonight,
:14:16. > :14:25.Rashid Johnson is one of the most talked-about young artists on the
:14:25. > :14:29.New York scene. A nominee for this year's Hugo Boss Prize, if he wins
:14:29. > :14:32.he'll get a serious trophy in the form of a solo show at the city's
:14:33. > :14:42.Guggenheim Museum. But you can see his work here in the UK right now,
:14:43. > :14:58.
:14:58. > :15:01.at the South London Gallery - where It's probably fair to say that not
:15:01. > :15:04.many people in this country are familiar with the name Rashid
:15:04. > :15:08.Johnson. At least, not yet. But back in America he's been making
:15:08. > :15:12.waves for a while now. He's only in his mid-30s but earlier this year
:15:12. > :15:15.he had a mid-career retrospective in his home town of Chicago. His
:15:16. > :15:18.work is often seen through the prism of race because it alludes to
:15:18. > :15:23.African traditions and important black cultural figures, and he uses
:15:23. > :15:26.all sorts of strange materials like black soap and shea butter. And
:15:26. > :15:29.I've heard that he's putting the finishing touches to his new show
:15:29. > :15:39.here at the South London Gallery using an old broom handle, and a
:15:39. > :15:45.
:15:45. > :15:48.bucket of molten black wax. Johnson began his career as a
:15:48. > :15:53.photographer, with a series of portraits of homeless black men.
:15:53. > :16:03.And his work is bathed in the colour black: from scorched wood to
:16:03. > :16:03.
:16:03. > :16:06.the black wax and soap glooped over his wall pieces.
:16:06. > :16:10.His work has been described as "post black" - redefining what it
:16:10. > :16:13.means to be black in a country that has been through the civil rights
:16:13. > :16:23.movement and now has an established black middle class, and even a
:16:23. > :17:00.
:17:00. > :17:04.black president. I wonder what Maybe you could explain a little
:17:04. > :17:10.bit about where we are - what is this space that you've created? Why
:17:10. > :17:13.are there these couches with zebra- striped patterns? It's interesting.
:17:13. > :17:19.When I first started thinking about making this show, I had the
:17:19. > :17:24.opportunity to visit the Freud Museum. In North London? Yeah. And
:17:24. > :17:26.when I was there, I was looking at these daybeds. And I started
:17:26. > :17:33.thinking about, like a group therapy scenario. Something that's
:17:33. > :17:36.kind of followed my work a few times. This idea of healing. I
:17:36. > :17:39.started thinking about if there was a potential disaster, there's a
:17:39. > :17:46.shelter - people are often brought into, like a gymnasium, and there
:17:47. > :17:53.are cots lined up. And those cots are a place for them to rest while
:17:53. > :17:56.they deal with the destruction that's happened around them. So for
:17:56. > :18:00.this show I was kind of thinking about entering that concept, but
:18:00. > :18:03.instead of there being cots in a row you would have these daybeds in
:18:03. > :18:12.a row, so the space could simultaneously be a place for
:18:12. > :18:15.treatment, and healing. OK. Like psychoanalytic treatment. Something
:18:15. > :18:17.else that's very noticeable immediately when you come in, is
:18:17. > :18:21.that there are lots and lots of motifs that are extremely
:18:21. > :18:23.individual - things that you've used before in your work. I mean,
:18:23. > :18:29.that shelving-stack-cum-painting is quite familiar from some of your
:18:29. > :18:31.earlier work. And over there we've got this, what do you call them?
:18:31. > :18:36.Rifle sights? Gun sights? That you've used before. Yeah, or
:18:36. > :18:40.crosshairs. Are you trying to build up your own - mythology is not
:18:40. > :18:42.quite the right word, but your own set of visual codes? Well, I think
:18:42. > :18:48.there's a vocabulary, and it's one that I've become comfortable with
:18:48. > :18:52.and I understand. So when I think about this gun sight, whether it's
:18:52. > :18:57.being pointed at you, or you are the person pointing it. And so
:18:57. > :19:02.maybe that description of violence, or scarring. The shea butter which
:19:02. > :19:05.is very much a healing material. The black soap which is very much a
:19:05. > :19:10.cleansing material, as well as a healing material. Why have you used
:19:10. > :19:16.soap and not paint? Well, I always wanted to make an object that you
:19:16. > :19:19.could potentially clean your body with. At the end of the day, you
:19:19. > :19:26.could pull down the Rashid Johnson painting off the wall, and actually
:19:26. > :19:28.clean yourself. Even without such high-falutin' conceptual stuff, I
:19:28. > :19:34.find the work itself really appealing in purely formal terms of
:19:34. > :19:37."a thing that looks nice". These great gobbets of wax and soap form
:19:37. > :19:39.a dense surface reminiscent of abstract expressionism, and in the
:19:39. > :19:49.gestures and the pouring again there are references to mid-20th
:19:49. > :19:50.
:19:50. > :19:54.century American painters like Frank Stella and Jackson Pollock.
:19:54. > :20:00.In a work like this, this is actually flooring. Oh yeah! Parquet
:20:00. > :20:05.flooring, you can see there. Right, so it's wood flooring. And then
:20:05. > :20:11.it's burned with a torch to almost make it into my own charcoal. And
:20:11. > :20:16.then the drawing is made on that built charcoal. But it's really the
:20:16. > :20:23.elevation of the floor to the wall, right? Like, any inanimate object
:20:23. > :20:33.would ideally want to be an artwork. You know? That would be - that's
:20:33. > :20:35.the most magical position to occupy. Johnson grew up in a middle-class
:20:35. > :20:43.black family who enthusiastically embraced the Afrocentrism movement
:20:43. > :20:45.of the 1970s. His work is peppered with personal references: books
:20:45. > :20:52.from his mother's shelves, significant albums, and exotic
:20:52. > :20:55.touches like the zebra skins. So a lot of these things, when
:20:56. > :20:58.people come to your work, what they need to understand is that lots of
:20:58. > :21:04.these have personal, autobiographical meaning for you.
:21:04. > :21:07.They do but they're also employable. I mean a work like this, you could
:21:07. > :21:13.listen to the Blakey album while you're putting on shea butter and
:21:13. > :21:17.reading the Ellis Cose book. Maybe you would understand how I came to
:21:17. > :21:20.make it, because that's how I came to make it, was by listening to the
:21:20. > :21:29.album, reading the book and putting on shea butter which I consistently
:21:29. > :21:34.do throughout the day, which is why my skin is so soft. LAUGHTER
:21:34. > :21:39.Rashid Johnson: Shelter is at the South London Gallery until 25th
:21:39. > :21:42.November. Now back to that question - what's a Blackta? It's a black
:21:42. > :21:46.actor and the name of Nathan Martello-White's new satire on the
:21:46. > :21:49.highs and lows of trying to get your name up in lights - or a job,
:21:49. > :21:57.at least. Lindsay Johns has been to the Young Vic Theatre to look in on
:21:58. > :22:01.rehearsals. We all know it's tough making it as
:22:01. > :22:04.an actor in any country, wherever you're from. But in Britain today,
:22:04. > :22:06.is it even tougher as a young, black actor? It's this question,
:22:06. > :22:15.and many others, that one actor- turned-playwright raises in his
:22:15. > :22:18.debut play, Blackta. The play's about the frustrations
:22:18. > :22:20.and obstacles faced by a group of jobbing actors, and it's set in a
:22:21. > :22:25.never-ending audition room, where the characters are competing with
:22:25. > :22:28.each other for a way out and their big break. It's a world where
:22:28. > :22:33.fulfilling black stereotypes seems to be more important than any
:22:33. > :22:39.measure of talent. Could you lean off, or lean yourself on bigger
:22:39. > :22:43.things? But you're naturally big. What's that supposed to mean?
:22:43. > :22:50.you know, your face is just naturally wide. And your stature,
:22:50. > :22:58.bulky. Nah, bro. You're the buck! Got them slave genes, bruv. Them
:22:58. > :23:00."come build be a pyramid" genes! You're a joker. With fewer decent
:23:01. > :23:07.parts for black actors, competition is fierce, but even among fellow
:23:07. > :23:10.cast members? Now guys, be honest, we all know it's a such a small
:23:10. > :23:13.world in the black British actor pool; you all know each other,
:23:13. > :23:17.you're all going, often, for the same parts. Is there a genuine
:23:17. > :23:20.sense of camaraderie, or is it fake? You bump into the same faces,
:23:20. > :23:23.and at first it might be sort of like competition, but you kinda
:23:23. > :23:26.help each other out, or if you don't go up for something or you
:23:26. > :23:30.haven't get something. But on the other hand, I think that sometimes
:23:30. > :23:33.the claustrophobia of it. Yeah. kind of, you know, it can create
:23:33. > :23:35.tension. You want your friends to succeed, but you also want to
:23:35. > :23:41.succeed, and it's hard sometimes watching people you've trained with.
:23:41. > :23:44.Exactly. People you've worked with doing really well, and you're not
:23:44. > :23:47.doing as well. You kind of understand that we're not in
:23:47. > :23:50.control of who gets it, so let's be cool with each other. Are there
:23:50. > :23:53.times when you walk into that audition room, or the casting room,
:23:53. > :23:57.and you read the character and you're up for another, yet another,
:23:57. > :24:00.drug dealer or "you get me blud?" thug, and your heart just sinks and
:24:00. > :24:03.you go "No, can't do this again"? Sometimes you get a bit frustrated
:24:03. > :24:06.because if it's a A black agent or black lawyer or something like that,
:24:06. > :24:10.there's always this breakdown that he's kinda made it out of this
:24:10. > :24:13.world of destitution. Yeah, yeah. And chaos. And his dad was on
:24:13. > :24:16.crack! Blah, blah, blah, and it's just sort of like, why can't he
:24:16. > :24:26.just be a guy who went to a good school. Middle class, university.
:24:26. > :24:31.And he became an agent, like a black James Bond? Brown, would you
:24:31. > :24:35.like to come through? Oh, but, Black's in at 10. They'd like to
:24:35. > :24:39.see you first. In Blackta, the characters don't have names -
:24:39. > :24:46.they're just skin tones. Provocative? Or is there a point to
:24:46. > :24:49.prove? For me it's quite derogatory to define people by colour. You
:24:49. > :24:53.know, I think you define people by their individuality, and the merit
:24:53. > :24:57.on who they are as people. There are, kind of, issues with how fair
:24:57. > :25:00.you are and how dark you are in relation to how attractive you are.
:25:00. > :25:03.And also the guys that I was hanging out with, who I loosely
:25:03. > :25:07.based the play off, erm, were all different spectrums of that - there
:25:07. > :25:10.was a mixed-race guy, there was a brown-skinned guy, and they all had
:25:10. > :25:13.their own takes on why, or why not, they were getting roles or not
:25:13. > :25:21.getting roles. So, I wanted to explore that, yeah. It's different
:25:21. > :25:27.for you anyway. How? You're yellow. What the fuck's that got to do with
:25:27. > :25:30.it? They looks at you differently. Not even in a better way,
:25:30. > :25:40.necessarily, but word on the grape is being yellow's an advantage -
:25:40. > :25:44.within reason. That's actually bullshit. And what about the
:25:44. > :25:46.experiences of the actors in the real world? The guys that tend to
:25:46. > :25:50.get the villainous roles, or whatever, are darker skinned. When
:25:50. > :25:54.I went to drama school, I played a lot of villains - which I loved, it
:25:54. > :25:58.was great, because they've got so much depth to them, but when I came
:25:58. > :26:02.out - nah. One crazy one - it was one of my first auditions, erm, and
:26:02. > :26:06.it was in a hotel, I was at the bottom of the stairs - I got there,
:26:06. > :26:09.I thought my time was 12 o'clock - I got there and there's just all
:26:09. > :26:12.these black actors, just in a line. And every actor was just coming
:26:12. > :26:16.past me on the way out saying "Don't go in there, man, it's
:26:16. > :26:20.degrading, don't go in there". And I was like, "You know what? I need
:26:20. > :26:23.this job!" So, I get to the top, I get into the room, the guy is there
:26:23. > :26:27.and he's like "Hi! How are you doing? Nice - have you read the
:26:27. > :26:31.signs?". I said "Yeah, I read the signs", and he's like, "OK, can you
:26:31. > :26:40.rap?". So I was like, "It's nothing to do with the piece, but you want
:26:40. > :26:47.me to rap? No!" You are a prime black buck. You epitomise black in
:26:47. > :26:53.essence. We looked at all the African American stars that we
:26:53. > :26:59.aspired to be like, or we admire, or are doing really well. They all
:26:59. > :27:05.kind of are big... They are ripped. They look good. And I'm looking at
:27:05. > :27:15.me and I'm, like, boy, you have some work to do! You have a bit of
:27:15. > :27:21.
:27:22. > :27:23.the pigeon-chest? Let's do some push-ups right now! In 2002, an
:27:24. > :27:27.unknown British actor from East London, frustrated with
:27:27. > :27:29.opportunities at home, moved to America. Idris Elba, burst onto the
:27:29. > :27:39.scene playing the brooding Baltimore gangster, Stringer Bell
:27:39. > :27:46.in the award-winning TV series, The Wire. I think we can work this out.
:27:46. > :27:53.They said that? It is the perfect time for them, man. Your name is
:27:53. > :27:55.ringing out. Why not quit while we are ahead? And only last year, the
:27:55. > :28:04.Birmingham-born actor, David Harewood, became a household name
:28:04. > :28:11.playing the uncompromising CIA boss in hit-drama, Homeland. We are
:28:11. > :28:14.about projecting military power now. His success as a pivotal character
:28:14. > :28:19.in Homeland prompted him to say that all black British actors had
:28:19. > :28:24.to go to America if they were serious about making it big.
:28:24. > :28:29.this show, in Blackta, two or three of the actors are thinking about
:28:29. > :28:36.going over. I have been ten years into this acting. I'm considering
:28:36. > :28:41.going to America. What do you do, all this black British talent, just
:28:41. > :28:44.decamping across the pond? You do your thing. I'm writing material
:28:44. > :28:49.now. I'm trying to create my own thing. I want the good actors
:28:49. > :28:52.around. There is a wealth of talent. I want to use it. I want to create
:28:52. > :28:56.material that they can express themselves in fully. Do you reckon
:28:56. > :29:00.in this country right now, we are ready for young black British
:29:00. > :29:09.talent to be black and British and not American? We are ready!
:29:09. > :29:14.LAUGHTER I have been ready, like. Blackta is at the Young Vic from
:29:14. > :29:16.26th October until 17th November. Next week on The Culture Show, Mark
:29:16. > :29:21.Kermode presents a special programme on the director Sam
:29:21. > :29:24.Mendes, who's just made Skyfall - the upcoming Bond film. We'll leave
:29:25. > :29:27.you tonight though, with a look at Mac Birmingham's current show - the