Tariq Ali claims BFI has frozen him out of multicultural TV season

Tue, 03 Feb 2026

Editor of groundbreaking Channel 4 show says he was shocked not to be invited to participate in new season

The editor of a groundbreaking Channel 4 show claims the BFI has frozen him out of an upcoming season on multicultural television and is presenting a skewed vision of the programme.

Tariq Ali was part of the creative team that produced the global current affairs Bandung File for Channel 4 in the 1980s. The current affairs programme spotlighted everything from the realities of apartheid South Africa to the fallout from the publication of Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses.