Oluwale

Jeremiah Quinn | 

NaN | 

United Kingdom | 

21:42 mins | 

Jeremiah Quinn’s Oluwale brings us the first film concerning the police murder of David Oluwale, a Nigerian migrant, in Leeds. Blending interesting genre and form in an incredibly accessible manner, the film takes us on a wide ranging journey of the story of racism and police violence in the UK ending with the possibility of a brighter future.

Oluwale primarily uses historical record in its representation of the story of David Oluwale. Quinn cuts to images of newspaper clippings, photographs and more from historical archives to build an engrossing and immersive feeling of the past. Littered amongst this is the intriguing use of both archive and fictional film. These images seem to evoke a specific and certain time, Northern England of the late 60s and early 70s, at the same time as pointing to the erased violence of these ‘objective’ images. Oluwale suggests to us that ideas of the nation are always steeped in violence.

The film then links the story of Oluwale to wider working class culture, particularly the football terraces of Leeds United FC of the 1960s and 70s. The link here is a subversive one. All too often working class football supporters are characterised as yobbish and violent. Many years of UK media coverage attests to this; one need only look to the initial coverage of the Hillsborough Disaster to convince. Left-leaning, semi-socialist politics is often not associated with the terraces. Yet, Leeds United fan’s lament of Oluwale, and their indictment of the Leeds Police, speaks to a strain of working class leftist politics that finds its roots in the socialistic ethic of football.

Thus, Oluwale radically alters and showcases historical narratives at the same time as creating a view to the future.