Who Killed Colin Roach? is Isaac Julien's first film, which reflects upon the death of Colin Roach, a 21 year old who was shot at the entrance of a police station in East London, in 1983.
Even though the police claimed Roach had commited suicide, evidence showed otherwise. Isaac Julien says that this work is essentially a response to the riots, an answer to certain fixed ways of looking at black cultures, but also at those ways we might feel about ourselves.
According to Paul Gilroy, "Territories and Who Killed Colin Roach? are among the best documents with which we can explain why the conflicts of the 1980s arose and why they must now be examined again. Those battles made Britain into a different kind of society - a precarious, market society. The last few years have taught us that it will be a more militarised, more unequal formation entirely beyond the reach of courageous artistic interventions of this vintage type."
34'42'', U-matic video, colour, sound
