Videos

Watch the complete film free on BFI Player (UK only). The friendship of a young white boy and a black girl reaches out across the generations in this uplifting mid-60s short, directed by South African-born actor and anti-Apartheid activist Lionel Ngakane. Against a background media narrative suggesting ever-worsening racial tensions, Jemima + Johnny offered a refreshingly optimistic take on black/white relations in a post-riots Notting Hill. Jemima + Johnny won its director an award at the 1966 Venice Film Festival, the first black British film to be so honoured. When five-year-old white boy Johnny meets Jemima, fresh off the boat from Jamaica, he leads her on a wide-eyed tour of the local neighbourhood. But when the children recklessly make their den in a derelict house, their peril causes Johnny's father to question his racist views.