 Contemporary British filmmakers are often required to balance journeyman
commercial work with cherished projects, and to weigh development dead-ends
against lucky breaks. What has set Menhaj Huda apart has been his ability
to shape a filmmaking CV of innovative and timely projects that capture the
attitudes and ambitions of youth audiences, leaving a legacy of pop-culture
memories for every generation to come of age since the mid-1990s.
Born in Bangladesh, Huda moved to the UK as a child. Graduating from
Oxford University in the late 1980s, he quickly moved into music video
production, editing pop promos for hip hop and dance acts such as Rebel MC and
Blue Pearl. Experience as a DJ and club promoter led to a pitch to Channel
4 for a series about the UK's dance music scene. They commissioned
Hypnosis (1993), an innovative magazine programme that combined music from DJs
such as Carl Cox with artist interviews, city profiles and club news.
Broadcast at Sunday teatime, it played like a publicly-funded terrestrial
comedown and lasted only one series. But Huda's foot was in the door
and commissions followed for shows like global youth culture series
Passengers (Channel 4, 1994-2002) and R'n'B video jukebox Flava (Channel
4, 1996-2001).
Having cut his teeth in music television, he wanted to move into drama,
making his first fiction short, Jump Boy, in 1998. Penned by Harsha Patel,
and starring Ray Panthaki as an American gangster wannabe, it soon led to
mainstream directing work. In 2000 he helmed the two-part sequel to
Russell T. Davies' landmark Queer as Folk (Channel 4, 1999-2000) and earned
further stripes on episodes of EastEnders (BBC, 1985-present). By 2001 he had
landed his first feature length project, the Ibiza-set Is Harry on the Boat?
which was initially developed for theatrical release but ultimately shown as a
satellite-only TV pilot (Sky, tx. 8/7/2001) and led to a successful Sky
series.
Huda continued to develop feature projects while working on various TV
dramas, including episodes of The Bill (ITV, 1984-2010) and Murphy's Law (BBC,
2001-07), until Ray Panthaki brought Noel Clarke, and his script for kidulthood,
to Huda's attention. Recognising the potential of Clarke's tough material,
he decided to produce and direct the film to ensure the script kept its
authentic voice. In the process kidulthood (2005) became an unflinching,
sometimes brutal, film about the troubles of inner city 15-year-olds in Blair's
Britain. The target audience repaid its frankness and, following its
cinema release in March 2006, the film went on to shift 700,000 DVDs.
Clarke and Huda continued working together, most closely on the BBC Three
teen drama West10 LDN (tx. 10/3/2008) but Huda, keen to avoid pigeonholing,
chose to branch out again. His second feature, Everywhere and Nowhere
(2011), combined elements from his career to date, taking its inspiration from
one of his early shorts, Raj or Radge? (1998), and returning to the DJ culture
that gave him his start.
Dylan Cave
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FILM & TV CREDITS