Horace Ové, who has died aged 86, was the groundbreaking director of Pressure, the first full-length black British feature film, in 1975. Its release was delayed for several years by its backers at the British Film Institute, who feared that the scenes of police brutality might prove incendiary.
The picture charts with patience and fastidiousness the gradual political awakening of Anthony (Herbert Norville), an amiable African-Caribbean school-leaver. Living in west London with his traditionalist parents, he is torn between his white former classmates, who are getting on in a job market that is openly hostile to him, and his militant older brother, who castigates him for failing to adopt the black struggle as his own. It was a conflict that Ové, who arrived in Britain from Trinidad in 1960, knew only too well. “I’ve lived in two worlds ever since I’ve been here,” he said.
