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Ram John Holder
John Wesley Holder (born 2 February 1934), known professionally as Ram John Holder, is a Guyanese-British actor and musician, who began his professional career as a singer in New York City, before moving to England in 1962. He has performed on stage and in both film and television, the latter of which he is best known for playing Augustus "Porkpie" Grant in the Channel 4 sitcom ''Desmond's'' and in its spin-off series '' Porkpie''. Early life Holder's parents were devout members of the USA-based Pilgrim Holiness Church. He grew up in Georgetown, Guyana, during the 1940s and 1950s. Influenced by the church and the musical talents of his parents, he became quite accomplished playing the guitar. During the early '50s, the strict, strait-laced church membership was scandalised when he broke away and changed his name to "Ram" John. Holder began to perform as a folk singer in New York City. Acting career In 1962, Holder arrived in London and worked with Pearl Connor's Negro Theatr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Order Of The British Empire
The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is a British order of chivalry, rewarding valuable service in a wide range of useful activities. It comprises five classes of awards across both civil and military divisions, the most senior two of which make the recipient either a Orders, decorations, and medals of the United Kingdom#Modern honours, knight if male or a dame (title), dame if female. There is also the related British Empire Medal, whose recipients are affiliated with the order, but are not members of it. The order was established on 4 June 1917 by King George V, who created the order to recognise 'such persons, male or female, as may have rendered or shall hereafter render important services to Our Empire'. Equal recognition was to be given for services rendered in the UK and overseas. Today, the majority of recipients are UK citizens, though a number of Commonwealth realms outside the UK continue to make appointments to the order. Honorary awards may be made to cit ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Donmar Warehouse
The Donmar Warehouse is a 251-seat, not-for-profit Off-West End theatre in Covent Garden, London, England. It first opened on 18 July 1977. Sam Mendes, Michael Grandage, Josie Rourke and Michael Longhurst have all served as artistic director, a post held since March 2024 by Tim Sheader. The theatre produces new writing, contemporary reappraisals of European classics, British and American drama and small-scale musical theatre. As well as presenting at least six productions a year at its home in Covent Garden, as well transferring shows to the West End, Broadway and elsewhere. History Theatrical producer Donald Albery formed Donmar Productions around 1953, with the name derived from the first three letters of his name and the first three letters of his friend, ballerina Margot Fonteyn. In 1961, he bought the warehouse, a building that in the 1870s had been a vat room and hops warehouse for the local brewery in Covent Garden, and in the 1920s had been used as a film studio ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Half Moon Street (film)
''Half Moon Street'' is a 1986 American erotic thriller film directed by Bob Swaim and starring Sigourney Weaver, Michael Caine, Keith Buckley, and P. J. Kavanagh. The film is about an American woman working at a foreign research and policy institute in London who moonlights for a British escort service, becoming involved in the political intrigues surrounding one of her clients. The film was based on the 1984 novel '' Doctor Slaughter'' by Paul Theroux. Despite the source material, the film and book have distinct endings. ''Half Moon Street'' was the first RKO Pictures solo feature film produced in almost a quarter-century. The previous one was '' Jet Pilot'', which had been released in 1957. Plot Dr. Lauren Slaughter, Ph.D., is an American academic living in London, where she holds a prestigious but low-paid job at a Middle East policy institute. Her superiors take credit for her work and she struggles to pay the rent on her dilapidated flat. After an anonymous individu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Britannia Hospital
''Britannia Hospital'' is a 1982 British black comedy film, directed by Lindsay Anderson, which targets the National Health Service and contemporary British society. It was entered into the 1982 Cannes Film Festival and Fantasporto. ''Britannia Hospital'' is the final part of Anderson's Mick Travis Trilogy of films, written by David Sherwin, that follow the adventures of Mick Travis (portrayed by Malcolm McDowell) as he travels through a strange and sometimes surreal Britain. From his days at boarding school in '' if....'' (1968) to his journey from coffee salesman to film star in ''O Lucky Man!'' (1973), Travis's adventures finally come to an end in ''Britannia Hospital'', which sees him as a muckraking reporter investigating the bizarre activities of Professor Millar, played by Graham Crowden, with whom he had had an encounter in ''O Lucky Man''. All three films have characters in common. Some of the characters from ''if....'' that did not turn up in ''O Lucky Man!'' return f ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sankofa Film And Video
Sankofa Film and Video Collective was founded in 1983 by Isaac Julien, Martina Attille, Maureen Blackwood,Carol Brennan"Blackwood, Maureen 1960–" Contemporary Black Biography. 2003. Encyclopedia.com. Rretrieved 28 February 2025. Nadine Marsh-Edwards and Robert Crusz, who all graduated from various art colleges in London. Supported by the Greater London Council, the British Film Institute and Channel 4, among others, Sankofa was "dedicated to developing an independent black film culture in the areas of production, exhibition and audience". The name and the logo of the collective derive from the Akan word ''sankofa'' from Ghana, meaning "return and fetch it", represented figuratively as a bird turning its head back towards its tail, to signify "going back into the past and discovering knowledge that will be of benefit to the people in the future." Background The formation of Sankofa Film and Video Collective, like that of the Black Audio Film Collective, was a response to the soci ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
My Beautiful Laundrette
''My Beautiful Laundrette'' is a 1985 British romantic comedy-drama film directed by Stephen Frears from a screenplay by Hanif Kureishi. The film was one of the first films released by Working Title Films. The film is set in London during the Thatcher years, and reflects the often fraught relationships between members of the Pakistani and English communities at that time. The story focuses on Omar ( Gordon Warnecke), a British man of Pakistani origin, and his reunion and eventual romance with his childhood friend Johnny (Daniel Day-Lewis), now a street punk. The two become the caretakers and business managers of a launderette. The British Film Institute ranked ''My Beautiful Laundrette'' as the 50th greatest British film of the 20th century. The film was adapted into a stage play in 2002 and 2019. Plot Born in England, Omar Ali is a young Pakistani-British man living in South London during the mid-1980s. His father, Hussein, once a famous left-wing journalist in Pakistan, l ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pressure (1975 Film)
''Pressure'' is a 1976 British drama film directed by Horace Ové and starring Herbert Norville, Oscar James and Frank Singuineau. Co-written by Ové with Samuel Selvon, it is hailed as the UK's first Black dramatic feature-length film, and has been characterised as "a gritty and dynamic study of a generation in crisis". Ové said in a 2005 interview: "What Pressure tried to do was to portray the experience of the Windrush generation, the kids who came with them and the kids born here." Plot Tony is a second-generation Black British teenager, born and raised in Britain. The rest of his family—his mother, father, and older brother—were born in Trinidad in the Caribbean. This affects the family members' viewpoints about the society they live in. Tony's mother says that they, as Black people, must work hard, mind their own business and respect White people's laws because the Whites have the power. The film shows how the older generations are satisfied with living in a society ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Horace Ové
Sir Horace Shango Ové (born Horace Courtenay Jones; 3 December 1936 – 16 September 2023) was a Trinidadian-born British filmmaker, photographer, painter and writer based in London, England. One of the leading black independent filmmakers to emerge in Britain in the post-war period, Ové was the first black British filmmaker to direct a feature-length film, ''Pressure'' (1976).Josanne Leonard"An Interview with Horace Ove – Film-Maker 7/09/08. The Boy from Belmont" 22 March 2009. From ''Trinidad and Tobago Review'', October 2007. In its retrospective documentary ''100 Years of Cinema'', the British Film Institute (BFI) declared: "Horace Ové is undoubtedly a pioneer in Black British history and his work provides a perspective on the Black experience in Britain." Ové built a prolific and sometimes controversial career as a filmmaker, documenting racism and the Black Power movement in Britain over many decades through photography and in films such as ''Baldwin's Nigger'' (196 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Notting Hill
Notting Hill is a district of West London, England, in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. Notting Hill is known for being a wikt:cosmopolitan, cosmopolitan and multiculturalism, multicultural neighbourhood, hosting the annual Notting Hill Carnival and the Portobello Road Market. From around 1870, Notting Hill had an association with artists. 'Notting Hill and Bayswater', Old and New London: Volume 5 (1878), pp. 177-88. For much of the 20th century, the large houses were subdivided into multi-occupancy rentals. Continental Europe, Continental Eastern Europeans in the United Kingdom, Europeans, British African-Caribbean people, Caribbeans (British African-Caribbean people, African Caribbeans, Indo-Caribbean people, Indian Caribbeans, and White Caribbeans), Black British people, Africans, British Indian, Indians, British Arabs, Ara ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Leo The Last
''Leo the Last'' is a 1970 British drama film co-written and directed by John Boorman, based on the play ''The Prince'' by George Tabori, starring Marcello Mastroianni and Billie Whitelaw. Plot The ennui-afflicted heir to a deposed European throne returns to his father's house in West London to find that the neighbourhood has become a slum. An ornithologist ill at ease with others, he finds his spy-glass wandering from birds to observe his neighbours. Strictly an observer at first, he increasingly becomes agitated as their lives are blighted by violence, poverty, and injustice. In particular, he is moved by the plight of young Salambo Mardi and her family, beset by the rapist shopkeeper Kowalski and the pimp Jasper. Gradually he is stirred from his emotional detachment to try to assist her, a development that confuses, alarms, and angers his parasitic entourage: Margaret, his social climber fiancée; Max, the shady family lawyer (who for reasons never directly explained is d ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
John Boorman
Sir John Boorman (; born 18 January 1933) is a British film director, producer and screenwriter. He is best known for directing feature films such as '' Point Blank'' (1967), '' Hell in the Pacific'' (1968), ''Deliverance'' (1972), '' Zardoz'' (1974), '' Exorcist II: The Heretic'' (1977), ''Excalibur'' (1981), '' The Emerald Forest'' (1985), '' Hope and Glory'' (1987), '' The General'' (1998), '' The Tailor of Panama'' (2001) and '' Queen and Country'' (2014). Boorman has directed 20 films and received five Academy Award nominations, twice for Best Director (for ''Deliverance'', and ''Hope and Glory''), two British Academy Film Award nominations and three Golden Globe Award nominations. He is also credited with creating the first Academy Award screeners to promote ''The Emerald Forest''. In 2004, Boorman received the BAFTA Fellowship for lifetime achievement from the British Academy of Film and Television Arts. In the 2022 New Year Honours, he received a knighthood from Queen ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Swinging London
The Swinging Sixties was a youth-driven cultural revolution that took place in the United Kingdom during the mid-to-late 1960s, emphasising modernity and fun-loving hedonism, with Swinging London denoted as its centre. It saw a flourishing in art, music and fashion, and was symbolised by the city's "pop and fashion exports", such as the Beatles, as the multimedia leaders of the British Invasion of musical acts; the mod and psychedelic subcultures; Mary Quant's miniskirt designs; popular fashion models such as Twiggy and Jean Shrimpton; the iconic status of popular shopping areas such as London's King's Road, Kensington and Carnaby Street; the political activism of the anti-nuclear movement; and the sexual liberation movement. Music was an essential part of the revolution, with "the London sound" being regarded as including the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, the Who, the Kinks and the Small Faces, bands that were additionally the mainstay of pirate radio stations lik ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
