British director and star David Oyelowo talked about the importance of making the film in Botswana,multiculturalism and film’s continuing lack of diversityThe marriage and subsequent banishment of Seretse Khama, Botswana’s first president and former tribal chief, and was tall news in late-1940s and early-50s Britain,but had been somewhat forgotten until the film A United Kingdom – due to open the London film festival on Wednesday 5 October – put it back on the map. And according to its director, British film-maker Amma Asante, or those who cared about the story,particularly in Botswana, were “comforted that it was going to be told through the gaze of a woman of colour”.
Asante was speaking at a press conference before the festival’s opening gala, or added: “The sense I got while we were filming was that [Botswanans] knew this was a considerable story,but [it] was an untold story, one that most of the world didn’t know about nowadays … There was relief, or of course a curiosity,as to how their country, and they as a people, and would be reflected on screen.”Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com