Born: 1939 Belmont, Trinidad and Tobago
Died:
Year of Migration to the UK: 1960
Other name/s: Horace Ové CBE
Biography
Filmmaker, photographer and director, Horace Ové was born in Belmont, Trinidad on 3 December 1939 into a large and ‘somewhat bohemian family – a mixture of African, Indian, French and Spanish’ (Polly Pattullo, 'Horace Ové: Coming Home', Caribbean Beat, Issue 10, Summer 1994).
In 1960 he immigrated to Britain to study painting, photography and interior design before moving to Rome. In 1963 he worked as an extra on the set of the Joseph L. Mankiewicz film Cleopatra, starring Elizabeth Taylor, after production relocated to the Italian capital.
Ové subsequently returned to London, where he lived in Brixton, West Hampstead, and Camden Town, married Irish immigrant Mary Irvine, and studied at the London School of Film Technique. In 1966, Ové directed The Art of the Needle, a short film for the Acupuncture Association. Three years later he shot Baldwin's Nigger, a short film in which African-American writer James Baldwin — in conjunction with civil rights activist and comedian Dick Gregory — discusses Black experience and identity in Britain and America. Filmed at the West Indian Students' Centre in London, the film documents a lecture by Baldwin and a Q&A session with the audience. In 1970 his documentary, Reggae, shown in cinemas and on BBC television, included concert footage filmed at Wembley Arena. In 1973 he directed Blackblast, the first play by a black writer (and with an all-black cast) to be shown at London's Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA). In 1976 he directed the film for which he is best-known, Pressure – the first full-length drama feature film by a Black director in Britain. Telling the story of a London teenager who joins the Black Power movement in the 1970s, Pressure featured scenes of police brutality that ostensibly led to its banning for two years by its own backers, the British Film Institute (BFI), before it was eventually released to wide acclaim. Interviewed in 2010 by The Guardian about his iconic 1967 photograph of Michael X (founder of the Black Power movement in Britain), with bodyguards at Paddington Station, Ové said: ‘I'm a film-maker as well as a photographer, and I live in a visual world. I've always been an active photographer – if there's anything going on socially or politically, I want to know about it. So the late 1960s and early 70s were a very busy time for me.’ He attended and captured the first Black Power meeting with Stokely Carmichael, Allen Ginsberg and Michael X, along with John Lennon and Yoko Ono. He also photographed, among other notables of the time, C. L. R. James, Darcus Howe, Sam Selvon, Andrew Salkey, and John La Rose, founding members of the Caribbean Artists' Movement (CAM). Ové also recorded the birth and development of the Notting Hill Carnival during the 1970s and 1980s. In 1984 Ové's solo show, Breaking Loose, at The Photographers' Gallery, London, was the first one-person exhibition by a black photographer, followed in 1967 by Farewell to the Flesh, at the Cornerhouse, Manchester, which featured images of Trinidad Carnival. In 1986 Ové was named Best Director for Independent Film and Television by the BFI for his ‘contribution to British culture’. In 1987 he made the film Playing Away, starring Norman Beaton, centred on the residents of the fictional British village of Sneddington, who invite the ‘Caribbean Brixton Conquistadors’ (from South London) for a cricket match to commemorate ‘African Famine Week’.
Ové's 2003 film Dream to Change the World featured John La Rose, Trinidad-born activist, publisher and writer and founder of New Beacon Books in London. In 2004, the exhibition Pressure: Photographs by Horace Ové, ‘the first in-depth look at his photographic back catalogue’, curated by Jim Waters and David A. Bailey, in association with Autograph ABP, opened at Nottingham Castle Museum before touring Britain. Later that year Ové held a solo exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery in London. Ove's work also featured in Making History: Art and Documentary in Britain from 1929 to Now, Tate Liverpool (2006) and How We Are: Photographing Britain, Tate Britain (2007). In 2006, he was one of five winners of the £30,000 Paul Hamlyn Foundation Award for Visual Arts and in 2007 was awarded a CBE for his contributions to the British film industry. In November 2011, three young filmmakers competing on the television programme, Dragons' Den, as part of the 55th BFI London Film Festival Education Events, First Light, won £2000 funding and professional mentoring, having successfully pitched their idea to make a short documentary about Ové. A Tribute to Horace Ové was subsequently presented by Birkbeck Institute for Social Research, University of London, in collaboration with Birkbeck Institute for the Moving Image in 2015, with screenings of Ové's films and a symposium. In 2017, at the 12th Screen Nation Film and Television Awards, Ové was honoured with the Edric Connor Trailblazer award and in 2018 he received the British Independent Film Awards (BIFA) Special Jury Prize. In 2019 his work was included in Get Up, Stand Up Now an exhibition at Somerset House, London curated by his son, Zak, celebrating 50 years of Black creativity in Britain and beyond. In late 2021 Ové will feature in Life Between Islands: Caribbean-British Art 1950s-Now at Tate Britain. Horace Ové lives and works in London. His work is held in the National Portrait Gallery collection, London.
Related books
- David A. Bailey ed., Between the Islands: Caribbean-British Art 1950s-Now (London: Tate Publishing, 2021)
- John Hill ed., A Companion to British and Irish Cinema (Wiley, 2019)
- Kobena Mercer, Welcome to the Jungle: New Positions in Black Cultural Studies (Taylor & Francis, 2013)
- Sarah Barrow, John White eds., Fifty Key British Films (Taylor & Francis, 2012)
- Neil Mitchell, World Film Locations: London (Intellect Books, 2011)
- Lola Young, Fear in the Dark: 'Race', Gender and Sexuality in the Cinema (Abingdon: Routledge, 2006)
- Geoffrey V. Davis, Staging New Britain Aspects of Black and South Asian British Theatre Practice (Pie Lang, 2006)
- Jim Waters and David Bailey, eds., Pressure: Photographs by Horace Ove (Nottingham: Nottingham City Museums & Galleries, 2004)
- Melvin Ember, Carol R. Ember, Ian Skoggard, Encylopedia of Diasporas: Immigrant and Refugee Cultures Around the World (Kluwer Academic/Plenum, 2004)
- David Christopher, British Culture: An Introduction (Taylor & Francis, 2002)
- Stephen Bourne, Black in the British Frame: The Black Experience in British (London: Bloomsbury, 2001)
- Radhika Crane, Radhika Mohanram, Ralph J. Crane, Ralph J. Mohanram eds., Shifting Continents/Colliding Cultures Diaspora Writing of the Indian Subcontinent (Rodopi: 2000)
- Michael T. Martin ed., Diversity, Dependence, and Oppositionality (Wayne State University Press, 1995)
- Polly Pattullo, 'Horace Ové: Coming Home', <em>Caribbean Beat</em>, Issue 10, Summer 1994
Public collections
Related organisations
- BBC (filmmaker)
- London School of Film Technique (student)
- Paul Hamlyn Foundation Award for Visual Arts (award recipient)
Related web links
- June Givanni, Horace Ové: reflection on a thirty-year experience, BFI Sight and Sound, September 2021
- Giving voice to the common individual: Zak Ové on Horace Ové, BFI Sight and Sound, September 2021
- ScreenTalks Archive: Horace Ove on Pressure, Barbican
- Horace Ové, INIVA
Selected exhibitions
- Life Between Islands: Caribbean-British Art 1950s-Now, Tate Britain (2021)
- Get Up, Stand Up Now, Somerset House (2019)
- Horace Ove, Pressure, Barbican Centre (2017)
- How We Are: Photographing Britain, Tate Britain (2007)
- Making History: Art and Documentary in Britain from 1929 to Now, Tate Liverpool (2006)
- Photographs by Horace Ové, National Portrait Gallery (2004)
- Pressure: Photographs by Horace Ové, Nottingham Castle Museum (2004)
- Farewell to the Flesh, Cornerhouse, Manchester (1987)
- Breaking Loose: Horace Ove, The Photographers' Gallery (1984)
