| Abstract | Focused on the British film Black Joy (Simmons, 1977), this article draws on archival material and recent interviews with both Jamal Ali, the radical black poet-playwright who wrote the heavily autobiographical screenplay for the film - concerned with the travails of Benjamin, a young man who has migrated from Guyana to Brixton (London) - and members of the public who saw the film on its London release. The aim is to argue that the making, marketing and subsequent reception of Black Joy reveal much about notions of creative agency, diasporic identities and cultural memory. Director Anthony Simmons' intention to 'show the reality of life in an immigrant area' meant that the screening of Black Joy was eagerly anticipated by local black cinema audiences who, however, had also seen Black Joy's figure of the migrant 'country boy' in the Jamaican film The Haider They Come (Henzell, 1972). Thus, as this article goes on to demonstrate these black audiences compared the 'authenticity' of diasporic representations in both films and found Black Joy problematical; the ensuing negative responses to Simmons' film, in the black community and the black radical press, lead to Ali being shunned by his community. Ultimately, this article explores the hidden history of Black Joy, which reveals a struggle over notions of 'home' in both the process of its making and its reception by blacks.
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