As many reviews of Steve McQueen’s Small Axe have noted, the miniseries derives its somewhat unusual title from a West Indian proverb made popular in a Bob Marley song: “If you are the big tree, we are the small axe.” This pithy adage evokes, with a tone of striking confidence, the central theme of McQueen’s ambitious five-part anthology of stories—namely, the struggle of London’s West Indian community against the forces of institutional racism, state repression, and police violence.
Keep chipping away at these unjust structures of dominance for long enough, McQueen’s miniseries more than suggests, and eventually they’ll fall to the ground. But it would be easy to miss a key word embedded in that proverb, one which is central not only to the thematic basis of Small Axe, but to its very construction: “we.”
Composed of five self-contained films, each telling a distinct story about the joys and,...
Keep chipping away at these unjust structures of dominance for long enough, McQueen’s miniseries more than suggests, and eventually they’ll fall to the ground. But it would be easy to miss a key word embedded in that proverb, one which is central not only to the thematic basis of Small Axe, but to its very construction: “we.”
Composed of five self-contained films, each telling a distinct story about the joys and,...
- 5/12/2023
- by Keith Watson
- Slant Magazine
It is often hard enough to conjure the right mood for one installment of an anthology series, but what if your task is five times that? Music supervisor Ed Bailie was tasked by Academy Award-nominated director Steve McQueen to do just that for “Small Axe,” a quintet of period-specific films about Black life in England ranging from the 1960s to the 1980s, touching on social topics from police brutality to the failings of the education system to a raging house party’s effect on young lives. “We used about 80 or 90 songs in the course of ‘Small Axe,'” says Bailie, “and each film had different music illustrated in the scripts, so every part carved their own identities throughout”.
For “Mangrove,” the lengthiest and arguably most-charged entry that opens “Axe,” Bailie took his cue from the Trinidadian-settled Notting Hill of the late 1960s — far removed from the gentrified neighborhood seen years...
For “Mangrove,” the lengthiest and arguably most-charged entry that opens “Axe,” Bailie took his cue from the Trinidadian-settled Notting Hill of the late 1960s — far removed from the gentrified neighborhood seen years...
- 6/14/2021
- by Jason Clark
- The Wrap
Amazon Prime just won a couple of Oscars for their film “Sound of Metal,” and now the streaming service is jumping right into Emmy season with “Beyond the Screen” virtual events and a “Prime Video Presents” podcast to promote their slate of programs from May 1 through June 10. Their events can be found on the Emmys FYC calendar.
Among the programs being promoted by Amazon this season include the sci-fi dramas “The Boys” and “The Expanse”; the Barry Jenkins limited series “The Underground Railroad”; the telefilms “Uncle Frank,” “Yearly Departed,” and “Sylvie’s Love”; the documentary “All In: The Fight for Democracy“; the anthologies “Solos” and “Them”; and the theatrical special “What the Constitution Means to Me.”
Seersvp now for May 10: TV documentary directors for ‘Framing Britney Spears,’ ‘Heaven’s Gate,’ ‘High on the Hog,’ ‘Seduced,’ ‘The Year Earth Changed’ join Gold Derby’s Meet the Experts series
“Beyond the Screen” kicked...
Among the programs being promoted by Amazon this season include the sci-fi dramas “The Boys” and “The Expanse”; the Barry Jenkins limited series “The Underground Railroad”; the telefilms “Uncle Frank,” “Yearly Departed,” and “Sylvie’s Love”; the documentary “All In: The Fight for Democracy“; the anthologies “Solos” and “Them”; and the theatrical special “What the Constitution Means to Me.”
Seersvp now for May 10: TV documentary directors for ‘Framing Britney Spears,’ ‘Heaven’s Gate,’ ‘High on the Hog,’ ‘Seduced,’ ‘The Year Earth Changed’ join Gold Derby’s Meet the Experts series
“Beyond the Screen” kicked...
- 5/3/2021
- by Daniel Montgomery
- Gold Derby
Amazon Prime Video has once again put a pause on its annual in-person Emmy FYC pop-up events space due to the pandemic. But in its place, the streamer has curated a virtual experience, dubbed “Beyond the Screen,” that kicks off this weekend with an evening devoted to the stars, crafts and music of Steve McQueen’s anthology series “Small Axe.”
Variety has the exclusive roundup of the Emmy FYC panels, screenings, podcasts and performances that will kick off Amazon Studios and Prime Video’s campaign starting May 1, and continuing through June 10.
Talent populating the panels, set to be streamed for Television Academy members, include McQueen and John Boyega (“Small Axe”); Barry Jenkins and Joel Edgerton (“The Underground Railroad”), and Karl Urban, Antony Starr, Aya Cash and Jack Quaid (“The Boys”). Other contenders participating include “Solos,” “Sylvie’s Love,” “The Expanse,” “Them,” “Uncle Frank,” “What The Constitution Means To Me” and “Yearly Departed.
Variety has the exclusive roundup of the Emmy FYC panels, screenings, podcasts and performances that will kick off Amazon Studios and Prime Video’s campaign starting May 1, and continuing through June 10.
Talent populating the panels, set to be streamed for Television Academy members, include McQueen and John Boyega (“Small Axe”); Barry Jenkins and Joel Edgerton (“The Underground Railroad”), and Karl Urban, Antony Starr, Aya Cash and Jack Quaid (“The Boys”). Other contenders participating include “Solos,” “Sylvie’s Love,” “The Expanse,” “Them,” “Uncle Frank,” “What The Constitution Means To Me” and “Yearly Departed.
- 4/30/2021
- by Michael Schneider
- Variety Film + TV
In Education, the fifth and final of Steve McQueen’s Small Axe films, we’re given a young hero named Kingsley Smith (Kenyah Sandy), whose mother Agnes (Sharlene Whyte) is a nurse, whose father Edmond (Daniel Francis) is a carpenter, and whose sister Stephanie (Tamara Lawrence) is 18 and can read. This last point is not as arbitrary as it may seem. One the feats of McQueen’s movie is that, by the end, the ability to read — proof of having been educated — is all the more powerful for seeming exceptional.
- 12/23/2020
- by K. Austin Collins
- Rollingstone.com
Steve McQueen’s five-film opus Small Axe concludes with Friday’s release of Education, the story of a boy named Kingsley (Kenyah Sandy), whose difficulty with reading has him reassigned to a school for the “educationally subnormal” — a.k.a. students for whom the British school system has abandoned all hope. Education completes a quintet of remarkable stories set between 1968 and 1984, some rooted in fact, others inspired by the experiences of the 12 Years a Slave director’s mother and other Englanders of West Indian descent.
[All 5 Films Are Streaming on Amazon Prime Video]
The first installment,...
[All 5 Films Are Streaming on Amazon Prime Video]
The first installment,...
- 12/18/2020
- by Alan Sepinwall
- Rollingstone.com
With a seemingly endless amount of streaming options—not only the titles at our disposal, but services themselves–each week we highlight the noteworthy titles that have recently hit platforms. Check out this week’s selections below and past round-ups here.
Chained for Life (Aaron Schimberg)
“Do you feel like the story is exploitative?” a journalist asks actress Mabel (Jess Weixler) about the new film she’s starring in, early into Aaron Schimberg’s brilliant second feature Chained for Life. In a meta-melodrama that constantly seesaws between fiction and reality, sprawling across a labyrinthine and multi-layered narrative that seamlessly jumps from one textual plane to another, I found myself wondering whether the question was in fact leveled at Schimberg’s own work. – Leonardo G. (full review)
Where to Stream: Mubi (free for 30 days)
Education (Steve McQueen)
In Education, the fifth and final film in Steve McQueen’s Small Axe anthology,...
Chained for Life (Aaron Schimberg)
“Do you feel like the story is exploitative?” a journalist asks actress Mabel (Jess Weixler) about the new film she’s starring in, early into Aaron Schimberg’s brilliant second feature Chained for Life. In a meta-melodrama that constantly seesaws between fiction and reality, sprawling across a labyrinthine and multi-layered narrative that seamlessly jumps from one textual plane to another, I found myself wondering whether the question was in fact leveled at Schimberg’s own work. – Leonardo G. (full review)
Where to Stream: Mubi (free for 30 days)
Education (Steve McQueen)
In Education, the fifth and final film in Steve McQueen’s Small Axe anthology,...
- 12/18/2020
- by Jordan Raup
- The Film Stage
In Education, the fifth and final film in Steve McQueen’s Small Axe anthology, Kenyah Sandy’s young, bespectacled face commands the frame. His character, Kingsley Smith, experiences plenty of adolescent strife at the hands of a negligent education system that shunts him off to a “special” school for the “educationally sub-normal” (Esn) based on poor results from a culturally biased Iq test. He wears a vulnerable, frightened expression whenever he’s powerless to combat cruel, indifferent authority figures or mistaken for lazy when he just needs guidance. McQueen and photographer Shabier Kirchner focus on Sandy’s face partly because he represents an entire generation of Black British children who were in danger of being left behind by colonialist institutions. If it weren’t for a group of crusading West Indian women who actively sought out these children and their parents, they would have been doomed to a fate of...
- 12/18/2020
- by Vikram Murthi
- The Film Stage
In any year, Steve McQueen’s “Small Axe” would be a historic achievement. But in 2020, amid a worldwide reckoning on racial injustice while a pandemic has wreaked havoc on the entertainment industry — blurring the lines between film and TV — this five-part series is an auspicious game-changer.
Shining a light on little-known tales of Black pride and heroism from the U.K.’s Windrush generation, each instalment is set between the late ’60s and early ’80s and features people from the Black diaspora speaking in their own dialects and revelling in their culture. For that alone, “Small Axe” is special, but the themes in each of the interlinked stories still resonate powerfully today.
With the final chapter debuting on the BBC on Sunday, the time has come to rank the series as a whole — a considerable challenge when you consider that while satisfaction may have varied over the films, there isn...
Shining a light on little-known tales of Black pride and heroism from the U.K.’s Windrush generation, each instalment is set between the late ’60s and early ’80s and features people from the Black diaspora speaking in their own dialects and revelling in their culture. For that alone, “Small Axe” is special, but the themes in each of the interlinked stories still resonate powerfully today.
With the final chapter debuting on the BBC on Sunday, the time has come to rank the series as a whole — a considerable challenge when you consider that while satisfaction may have varied over the films, there isn...
- 12/13/2020
- by Amon Warmann
- Variety Film + TV
“Education.” That’s as good a title as any for the final episode of Steve McQueen’s “Small Axe” project — a series of five features, some little more than an hour, designed to educate and inform audiences about the experience of London’s West Indian immigrant population, about the expectations of assimilation raised by a white-majority country and the obstacles such a society puts in the way of that goal.
To get the picture, audiences needn’t see every entry of this prismatic project, which views the community from different angles at different times over several decades, and this may well prove to be the least watched of the lot, being the last and least starry of them. But do yourself a favor: Don’t miss “Education.” Watch it with your kids — it’s the most accessible to young audiences — and share it with others.
Set in the 1970s, this...
To get the picture, audiences needn’t see every entry of this prismatic project, which views the community from different angles at different times over several decades, and this may well prove to be the least watched of the lot, being the last and least starry of them. But do yourself a favor: Don’t miss “Education.” Watch it with your kids — it’s the most accessible to young audiences — and share it with others.
Set in the 1970s, this...
- 12/11/2020
- by Peter Debruge
- Variety Film + TV
"As a collective, we stand a chance!" Amazon has released one more trailer for the fifth (and final) film in the Small Axe anthology series (now streaming) from Steve McQueen. This last one is titled Education, telling the coming-of-age story of 12-year-old Kingsley, played by Kenyah Sandy, who has a fascination for astronauts and rockets. Amazon (in the US) and BBC (in the UK) have been releasing the five films one at a time for the last few weeks following premieres at the London and New York Film Festivals earlier in the fall. Based on true stories, each of the five films celebrate little known stories of Black pride and resilience. Let's learn about what happens when even ordinary people stand up to police brutality and racial injustice to achieve something transformative. The casts include Letitia Wright, John Boyega, Malachi Kirby, Shaun Parkes, Rochenda Sandall, Alex Jennings, Jack Lowden, Micheal Ward,...
- 12/8/2020
- by Alex Billington
- firstshowing.net
“These are the stars of Andromeda!” Education, the fifth episode of Steve McQueen’s 2020 Small Axe anthology, co-written with Alastair Siddons, sets the tone in outer space. This is a film about strong, formidable performances by women, whose characters take on the systemic wrongs and grinding injustices imposed upon the children in their community.
Twelve-year-old Kingsley Smith (Kenyah Sandy) visits the planetarium with his class and knows then and there that he wants to become an astronaut. In school, they read John Steinbeck’s Great Depression novella Of Mice And Men. When it is Kingsley’s turn, he remains silent. He is called a “big blockhead” by his teacher (Sam Fourness) and his mainly white classmates laugh.
Later, during a music lesson, his harmless acting up is judged “unacceptable” by his prowling and growling teacher Mr. Hamley (Nigel Boyle). While...
Twelve-year-old Kingsley Smith (Kenyah Sandy) visits the planetarium with his class and knows then and there that he wants to become an astronaut. In school, they read John Steinbeck’s Great Depression novella Of Mice And Men. When it is Kingsley’s turn, he remains silent. He is called a “big blockhead” by his teacher (Sam Fourness) and his mainly white classmates laugh.
Later, during a music lesson, his harmless acting up is judged “unacceptable” by his prowling and growling teacher Mr. Hamley (Nigel Boyle). While...
- 12/7/2020
- by Anne-Katrin Titze
- eyeforfilm.co.uk
Steve McQueen’s Small Axe portmanteau of five roughly hourlong films centered on racial issues in second-half 20th century UK wraps up with Education, which, at the end of the day, is what the series is all about: education in terms of the efforts of different segments of the population to begin to understand each other, to cast off ill-informed presumptions and long-entrenched prejudices, creating more opportunities and learning that the “other” should ideally create more possibilities than problems in a newly multi-racial society, if, in the end, citizens can open up to it all. Although British cinema for decades has looked long and hard at class distinctions, investigating racial divides of the past half-century in such a comprehensive way is something quite rare; this alone makes the series something unique. There are takeaways here for every segment of the audience, both domestic and foreign, young and old.
About a...
About a...
- 12/7/2020
- by Todd McCarthy
- Deadline Film + TV
Children are the future, as Whitney Houston famously reminded us, and both have to be fought for, as Steve McQueen so powerfully expresses in “Education,” the fifth and final chapter of “Small Axe,” his anthology for Amazon Studios and the BBC.
In many ways, this is different than anything else in the director’s filmography — it’s the first time he’s had a pre-teen protagonist, for one — but its urgent sense of a community banding together to create opportunity and to dismantle institutionalized racism makes it very much of a piece with the four other films under the “Small Axe” umbrella.
It’s the story of a family, although we begin following young Kingsley Smith, who has dreams of becoming an astronaut and possibly also playing for Tottenham F.C. When it’s clear that he’s having issues reading — his white teacher calls him a “blockhead” in front...
In many ways, this is different than anything else in the director’s filmography — it’s the first time he’s had a pre-teen protagonist, for one — but its urgent sense of a community banding together to create opportunity and to dismantle institutionalized racism makes it very much of a piece with the four other films under the “Small Axe” umbrella.
It’s the story of a family, although we begin following young Kingsley Smith, who has dreams of becoming an astronaut and possibly also playing for Tottenham F.C. When it’s clear that he’s having issues reading — his white teacher calls him a “blockhead” in front...
- 12/7/2020
- by Alonso Duralde
- The Wrap
‘Education’ Review: Steve McQueen’s ‘Small Axe’ Closes with an Inspiring Slice of Kitchen-Sink Drama
In several installments of Steve McQueen’s “Small Axe” anthology, the racism leveled against London’s West Indian population is an overt threat. In “Education,” it simmers in the shadows until someone dares to call it out. An inspiring slice of kitchen sink drama, McQueen’s illuminating look at a clandestine segregation policy in the London school district of the early ‘70s takes the perspective of an innocent child, and wouldn’t look out of place with the sort of social realist exposés Ken Loach has been making for over 50 years. In this case, however, this is an extension of the “Small Axe” mission to fill a historical gap deserving of greater scrutiny, and achieves that goal by serving as a kind of education itself.
When we first meet 12-year-old Kingsley (promising newcomer Kenyah Sandy), he’s entranced by a planetarium filled with stars, his eyes consumed with the possibilities of an unknown world.
When we first meet 12-year-old Kingsley (promising newcomer Kenyah Sandy), he’s entranced by a planetarium filled with stars, his eyes consumed with the possibilities of an unknown world.
- 12/7/2020
- by Eric Kohn
- Indiewire
Amazon Prime Video has premiered the trailer for Small Axe: Alex Wheatle, the fourth and penultimate film in Steve McQueen’s Small Axe anthology series for the streaming platform. Alex Wheatle will drop on December 11th, following Mangrove (November 20th), Lovers Rock (November 27th), and Red, White and Blue (December 4th).
Like the other entries in the Small Axe series, Alex Wheatle tells a story within London’s West Indian community from the late Sixties to the mid-Eighties. (The title is derived from the African proverb, “If you are the big tree,...
Like the other entries in the Small Axe series, Alex Wheatle tells a story within London’s West Indian community from the late Sixties to the mid-Eighties. (The title is derived from the African proverb, “If you are the big tree,...
- 11/30/2020
- by Claire Shaffer
- Rollingstone.com
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