198 Contemporary Arts & Learning

Save Sam’s Shots
Film archive of Brixton life since 1960

Help us save this important historical film archive of Clovis Salmon aka ‘Sam the Wheels’, the UK’s first Black documentary filmmaker. There is a great set of rewards to choose from, so please visit the page: Save Sam’s

About this project

Clovis Salmon, aka ‘Sam the Wheels’, has been making films since the late 1940’s. As a first generation migrant from Jamaica, Sam documented the lives and times of the Caribbean community as they struggled to establish themselves in the UK. Based on Railton Road in Brixton, which was known as ‘the Frontline’, Sam filmed the uprisings of the 1980’s, street life, weddings, funerals and baptisms creating a unique historical archive of film footage in various formats which tells the story of the Windrush generation from within the community itself. In 2008, 198’s project People, Signs, Resistance digitised a small part of the archive and made it more broadly available. This material is currently on show as part of the ‘Making Jamaica’ exhibition at Autograph ABP. However the majority of the archive still needs to be rescued, digitised and archived so it can be made accessible to the public.  We are raising these funds to undertake the crucial work of preserving Sam’s films for future generations. This unique documentary collection chronicles the history and contribution of the Caribbean community to the UK, and is an essential slice of black and Caribbean British heritage.