Why 1991 gay drama Young Soul Rebels remains groundbreaking for Black queer representation

From Tongues Untied to Moonlight, Black queer cinema has had a long history. But in the UK, that history didn’t start until the early 1990s.

It arguably began with Young Soul Rebels, directed by Isaac Julien in 1991, a reverent mystery-thriller set in 1977. It follows Chris, played by Valentine Nonyela, and Caz (Mo Sesay), two disc jockeys trying to find out who murdered their friend.

As the pair of queer punks get closer to the truth, they navigate and confront the racism, homophobia and class divide of 70s Britain through the eyes of what the film calls the “fringe-group melting pot” of London’s LGBTQ+ community.

Debuting at the Cannes Film Festival to middling reviews, it quickly became a cult classic among underground LGBTQ+ films of the pre-2000s.

Julien, who grew up and lived through the queer scene of 70s in East London, described the film to the BFI as something which “tries to deal with a number of questions that people would rather sweep under the carpet.”

He added that Young Soul Rebels, which is set during the tail-end of Labour prime minister James Callaghan’s government – before Margaret Thatcher won power – featured “a time when questions of national identity came to the forefront of British consciousness” because of the upcoming silver jubilee of Elizabeth II.

“I was a soul boy at that time and Nadine Marsh-Edwards, the producer, was a soul girl,” he said. “We were interested in 1977 as the moment in Black British culture when you witnessed Black style becoming a social force, a kind of resistance through style.”

This certainly came through in Young Soul Rebels, at least according to The Guardian’s Peter Bradshaw, who said in a review last year, when the film was re-released, that the movie’s “humane message” was about co-existence.

“Chris and Caz’s soul music fights its corner in a world of reggae, disco and punk and the movie’s humane message is that these types of music could and did co-exist,” he wrote. “Their co-existence was a life lesson.”

While the film’s inherently unique and captivating style mixes well with the substance of its message, Bradshaw saw it as less of a thriller than perhaps Julien had anticipated, because of the “cartoonishness” that “often creeps into British cinema.”

Empire’s William Thomas wasn’t so sure in a review from 2000, in which he said the film was “undoubtedly a bold, stylish effort… but ultimately suffers from trying to say too many things too fast to too many people”.

But, he added: “As a piece of contemporary anthropology, it sure as hell beats watching [John] Travolta dance his socks off in Saturday Night Fever.“

Regardless of the film’s legacy, its position in history is no doubt significant, giving way to a new age of Black cinema and media in the UK which is still riding high.

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