As an Asian woman I have never considered myself as somebody's ‘other’, nor have I seen myself as ‘marginal’ to an ubiquitous, unchanging, monolithic ‘centre’. But since my arrival in England in the mid-60s, it has been a constant challenge and struggle to defy those institutions and cultural canons which seek repeatedly to make me believe that because of my visible difference as an Asian woman I am an ‘other’ and therefore ‘marginal’.

There is a particular history that informs the thematic concerns of my work as much as my aesthetic sensibilities. That history is about a forced migration to an England that is intensely xenophobic and insular - an England so infused with outdated notions of itself that it refuses to look at the ashes of its own images as a decaying nation - let alone a long-dead empire.

"Images of Asian women in the British media have their root in the heyday of the British empire. The common-sense racist ideas about Asian women’s sexuality have been determined by racist patriarchal ideologies. On the one hand we are seen as sexually erotic and exotic creatures full of oriental promise, and on the other as sari-clad women who are dominated by their men, as oppressed wives or mothers breeding prolifically and colorizing the British landscape."

When my family, like many other Indian families, arrived in the UK in the mid-60s, anti-black feelings were running high, and ‘Paki-bashing’ was a popular sport amongst white youths. It was in the school playground that I first encountered myself as an undesirable alien, objectified in the frame of ‘otherness’. All those of us perceived as ‘marginal’, ‘peripheral’ and the ‘other’ know what it is like to be defined by someone else's reality - and often someone else’s psychosis.

I do not speak from a position of marginalisation - but more crucially from the resistance to that marginalisation. As a filmmaker, it is important for me to reflect on the process through which I constantly negotiate the borderlines between shifting territories . . . between the margin and the centre . . . between inclusion and exclusion . . . between visibility and invisibility. For, example, as lesbians and gays of colour, we have had to constantly negotiate and challenge the racism of the white gay community, and at the same time confront the homophobia of communities of colour.

What we have been seeing in recent years is the development of a new politics of difference which states that we are not interested in defining ourselves in relation to someone else or something else, nor are we simply articulating our cultural and sexual differences. We are creating a sense of ourselves and our place within different and sometimes contradictory communities, not simply in relation to . . . not in opposition to . . . nor in reversal to . . . not as a corrective to . . . but in and for ourselves. Precisely because of our lived experiences of racism and homophobia, we locate ourselves not within any one community but in the spaces between those different communities.

The US novelist Toni Morrison was once asked why she wrote the books that she did, and she replied that these were the books she wanted to read. In some ways, the reason why I make the films and videos that I do is also because they are the kinds of films and videos I would like to see: films and videos that engage with the creation of images of ourselves as women, as people of colour and as lesbians and gays: images that evoke passionate stirrings and that enable us to construct ourselves in our complexities. I am also interested in making work that documents our stories and celebrates and validates our existence to ourselves and our communities.

The mid-1980s have seen a new generation of video artists and film-makers emerging from the different black communities in Britain. This growth of independent film and video cultures has shown that there are many of us working not only to challenge harmful images but also to construct a whole new language of visual representation. Instead of allowing our marginality to impose a silence on us, we are actively engaged in making videos and films that have begun to redefine and recast notions of ‘mainstream’, ‘difference’ and ‘otherness’.

Just as much as I distance myself from any notion of an essentialist lesbian or black aesthetic, so, too, do I reject the idea that I am forever relegated to the confines of an outsider looking in. ‘Marginalised’ groups around the world are asserting our visions through film and video, and our creative efforts can only but grow in the 21st century as the map continues to be redrawn with our imaginations.

This is an extract from a longer article,’ That Moment of Emergence’, by Pratibha Parmar, first published in ‘Queer Looks’, in 1993. Pratibha Parmar is an independent film-maker who directs both documentary, including the widely acclaimed 'Warrior Marks', and drama. She is currently working on a documentary about women rock musicians. Contact fax: (44 171) 281 3809.