Before watching Looking for Love I had no idea what to expect. The title lead me to presume it was a film about speed dating or online dating, like many documentaries today. However, I was pleasantly surprised when I discovered it was an interesting and, in parts, amusing film about male-female love and relationships in the 21st century.
Most documentaries today focus on everything but basic male-female relationships, particularly those of black British people. Looking for Love was made all the more compelling by the fact that the director, Menelik Shabazz, took these basic elements and built an entire documentary around them.
This British documentary-film is made up predominantly of interviews with a huge range of people. From psychologists and relationship coaches to comedians, it offers opinions and ideas from a mass perspective. It also contains some fantastically relevant footage of Notting Hill Carnival.
Looking for Love compares traditional (particularly African) viewpoints on male-female relationships to incredibly modern affairs, whilst at the same time showing perspectives on dating, settling down, female independence and self-love.
It was great to finally see a relationship-based documentary that is stripped back - in the sense that rather than seeing sets of couples going on dates and being cheesy, it was real life people, talking about real life relationship issues and accord.
Looking for Love will be showing at Broadway Cinema on Sunday 23 August 2015 at 8.30pm. The will be a post-screening Q & A with the director Menelik Shabazz.
We have a favour to ask
LeftLion is Nottingham’s meeting point for information about what’s going on in our city, from the established organisations to the grassroots. We want to keep what we do free to all to access, but increasingly we are relying on revenue from our readers to continue. Can you spare a few quid each month to support us?
