The constant battle that the filmmaker has (and will always have) is to find the most appropriate way to reproduce an idea, a thought process or a meaning of an experience in the formal structure that we can describe as a film. As a black filmmaker seeking appropriate methods by which to represent the black subject and black history, my battle manifests itself as a search for meaning within practice methodology. For me, it is the formal structure of narrative film that contains (and constrains) the building blocks for representation in cinema, and in this chapter I will explain how I have appropriated narrative forms within my practice for a specific purpose.

Although individual artistic approaches to film practice (or the practice of filmmaking) vary with each filmmaker, conflicts become apparent if we attempt to discuss specific approaches in formulating a piece of work. For example, the British filmmaker Alexander Mackendrick posits filmmaking as a craft, with outcomes that result in ‘nothing more than a series of visual conventions based on the contract that exists between filmmaker and audience’. In contrast, the French filmmaker Robert Bresson recognised that the cinematic process is inextricably linked with – though separate from – other pure art forms such as photography, sculpture and theatre.