Burning an Illusion is a 1981 British drama film written and directed by Menelik Shabazz, about a young British-born black woman's love life, mostly shot in London's Notting Hill and Ladbroke Grove communities.
[5] The film begins with scenes of a house party, with Pat on voice-over introducing herself, somewhat as if from a diary.
Del manages to obtain the phone number of Pat's parents, and happens to call it while she is there, despite her having had her own flat for three years.
Del protests that he has taken her to the "best black restaurant in town" and paid for everything, implying that he expects something in return, but ultimately he leaves slightly disappointed.
Pat continues to iron Del's shirts and cook his meals, shopping from her wages, while Del begins to take liberties, treating the place as his own, inviting friends round to gamble at cards and expecting Pat to wait on them.
The film ends with Pat putting books in an incinerator, saying she could never believe her life and dreams could change so much.
Giving the history to the film's making, Shabazz wrote on his website (where Burning an Illusion is characterised as "a meeting ground for romantic love and politics"): "Being on the set of Horace Ove's movie Pressure fuelled my inspiration to make Burning an Illusion.
I hadn't known Horace prior but my then business partner David Kinoshi was playing one of the characters in the film and invited me along.
"[6] Burning an Illusion, according to Ade Solanke on the British Film Institute's Screenonline website, avoids "the tradition of placing white males at the centre of a story".
"[1] Reviewing the film in The Black Scholar, Roland S. Jefferson wrote: "What an eye opening surprise!
Menelik Shabazz has given us our first glimpse of contemporary black life in London and it is long overdue.
"[7] In Sight & Sound, Nick Roddick concluded: "It reflects an experience, burns an illusion and portrays a consciousness.
In 2020, David Robinson wrote in The Times that the film "dramatizes issues, attitudes and hazards of life in London's black communities."
In 2021, Derek Malcolm for The Guardian described it as "lively, accurate and thought-provoking, burning illusions without substituting too many of its own.
However, in 2020, Nigel Andrews at The Financial Times considered it "a movie that begins with a buoyant free-fall individualism [that] ends up like a speak-your-fate agitprop manifesto.
[3] Burning an Illusion was honoured with a Screen Nation Classic Film Award in October 2011.