“Small Axe” by Steve McQueen : towards a limited seriality
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In 2020, British filmmaker Steve McQueen brought together under the name Small Axe a collection of five autonomous films that have as common elements a place (London, Brixton district), a community under construction (from Jamaican immigration), an era (the 70s-80s), the rise of a musical genre (reggae), and above all, the omnipresence of systemic racism against this community. The time spans of the underlying stories are also diverse, ranging from a single night to a period of 10 years. Although this anthology mini-series was produced for TV channels, some of the films that make it up have been shown separately (New York Film Festival 2020, Cannes Film Festival 2020). What kind of seriality, diffuse and minimal, does the Small Axe mini-series offer?