Courtesy of Non-Aligned Productions

Coffee Coloured Children (1988) is an agonising description of childhood traumas experienced by director Ngozi Onwurah and her brother Simon Onwurah. It was the director's graduation film from St. Martins College of Art and Design and has a visual confidence and maturity that belies the relative inexperience of the filmmakers.

The themes of body image, self-mutilation and the mixed-race perspective are strongly identified in the montage of images and haunting soundtrack of childhood songs and in the uninflected voice over. The director returned to these themes in later works such as The Body Beautiful (1990), Flight of the Swan (1994) and the feature film Welcome II The Terrordome (1995).

The clarity of the filmmaker's account is matched by the honesty of her conclusion, which, though uncomfortable, is intelligently argued.

Ann Ogidi

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