Dibb's film successfully crosses the values of black British cinema with those of traditional British cinema, but the story still takes place within the same metropolitan framework as Pressure. It's just that the nature of the pressure has changed: it's economic and social in Bullet Boy, rather than specifically racial.Watching Pressure, Burning an Illusion, Young Soul Rebels and Bullet Boy, you could be forgiven for thinking that black British cinema is a London-based, black character-led narrative pulsating with tough rhythms and dense patois Amma Asante's A Way of Life (2004) asks you to think again. Tragic hero Ricky and his troublesome friend Wisdom find themselves stuck for transport after the latter's car has been trashed by his nemesis The unlikely lads fret They moan They sigh They take the bus. In a split second, all of the cultural kudos, the "cool" that rightly or wrongly is associated with black youth, flies out of the window. Black Britain is too often shorthand for Black London.Saul Dibb's Bullet Boy is a Black London film, the story of a particular manor, a particular yard. Yet its significance lies in the fact that it also transcends race Bullet Boy's characters are not solely defined by blackness We're dealing with a generations-old Britishness here too. It says: "Black Britons look good up on the silver screen." Sophie Okonedo, Mo Sesay, Valentine Nonyela, Eammon Walker - all of Julien's Rebels are glamorous, glitzy, gracious.

And their entry into our consciousness moots the eventuality of the black-Brit film-star sex symbol: Thandie Newton, Adrian Lester or Colin Salmon.While a student at Bristol University, I attended the premiere of Young Soul Rebels at the Watershed, the city's hippest arts venue. The audience included a sizeable number of black Londoners, black Bristolians and, me, a lone black Kent boy.Things became very interesting in the question-and-answer session with Julien after the screening. One original soul boy questioned the validity of the film-maker's sources and asked him about the club scene he purported to depict. Within minutes, we had statement and counter-statement on the historical importance of The Lacy Lady, a nightclub in Essex. Afterwards, as we spilled out into the foyer the scene turned thrillingly territorial, totally tribal People hailed their manor, their yard, their London Eastside massive Westside massive Grove posse This posse That posse.

The point is that the cultural currency of black Britain is overwhelmingly brokered by the capital. It was all so clear: Young Soul Rebels is not just a black British film, it's a black London film In fact, it's black east London Pressure is west Babylon is south. Its director Isaac Julien, another black Londoner, is rightly eulogised for the beautiful surrealism of 1988's Looking for Langston, an abstract meditation on homosexual identity, but he changed tack with Young Soul Rebels He had fun, he entertained. The brightness, the shininess, the sheer eye-popping sheen of the film is a revelation It's so un-Pressure So not like Babylon. It's as upliftingly glossy as Soul II Soul's "Back to Life" video had been in 1989.Julien's script fails to entwine convincingly a buddy story about two black London DJs, an evocation of Seventies "soul boy" culture and a murder mystery Nevertheless, Rebels succeeds in one essential aspect. Burning an Illusion (1981) by Menelik Shabazz, a Barbadian who came to London at the age of five, is thus of particular importance because it takes as it subject a black British woman It's about her awakening, her self-discovery We see her manor, her yard, her London.