The verdict produces a laugh from director John Akomfrah, 32. But, in the black cinema Britons are making, vintage style and vernacular chic are what it's all about. Film-makers like Akomfrah are young metropolitans, Europeans, hooked into art and attitudes that are changing the whole UK. From My Beautiful Launderette through Soul II Soul, Britain's black culture has seduced the rest of the world. It has shaped those fashions, sounds and images young people round the world perceive as the essence of being British. And, from Rifat Ozbek designs to Neneh Cherry raps, the majority of such black style has been exported on film.

Primed by promo videos, an international market is keen to see films made by young black Britons. And several now have projects poised to debut early this year. The Black Audio Film Collective releases both Who Needs A Heart? and Mysteries of July, a docu-drama about a 1983 death in custody. Thirty-three year old Isaac Julien's Young Soul Rebels, a feature which retells the story of punk from the viewpoint of black Londoners, shows at Cannes - and is tipped to be another My Beautiful Launderette. Projects like Karen Alexander's Sincerely Yours and V. Amani Napthali's Le Bohemian Noir Et Le Rennaissance Afrique deal, in very separate styles, with what it means to be young, black and British.

In the '70s, black feature film meant works like Horace Ové's "Pressure" or "Burning An Illusion" by Menalik Shabazz. They were oppositional dramas, movies which pitted protagonists against an English culture firmly resisting them. But this generation of black movie-makers - art-school graduates all - is different. Directors like Akomfrah, Napthali, Alexander, Julien (Who Killed Colin Roach?, Looking For Langston), Ngozi Onwurah (Coffee-Coloured Children, The Body Beautiful), Gurinder Chada (I'm British But, A Nice Arrangement), Maureen Blackwood (Perfect Image), Reece Auguiste (Black Audio Collective's Twilight City) and John Akomfrah (Black Audio Collective's Testament) have seen an amazing transformation. They have watched dreadlocks, sound systems, pirate radio, bhangra beats, black British slang and street chic enter the commercial mainstream and sell around the world.

Their parents and older siblings hung suspended between two worlds, two cultures. But this generation's artists control the cutting edge of UK style. Says John Akomfrah: "The black presence is now ubiquitous. Lift any stone, search any crevice of modern society. Anything that's alive has been arrived at by some negotiation with black British culture."

Karen Alexander is 32, and lectures on Independent Film at St. Martin's School of Art. Next year, she hopes to direct Sincerely Yours: the story of two black British girls who maintain a friendship for 20 years, even though one moves to New York. Scriptwriting in Manhattan, Alexander has been watching America worship black Britain. "You now see absolutely hundreds of people with their hair in locks: old people, young people, black people, whites. And all of them love Soul II Soul, Mica Paris, ragga style. But they can't get any real grasp on where we're coming from. They don't see us as Europeans. When Milli Vanilli turned out to be faking their records, they all went, 'Gosh! Who knew there were black people over in Germany!'"

The new black British directors, by contrast, consider themselves very much Europeans. "It's because of our whole geography," says Black Audio's Reece Auguiste, 33. "European art cinema is literally where we are. And therefore our models are different to the films which affect black Americans. The sense there's a monolith one does battle with - something called Hollywood - doesn't exist for us."

But for most British filmgoers, "black cinema" has been defined by African-Americans - Spike Lee (She's Gotta Have It, Do The Right Thing, Mo' Better Blues), Robert Townsend (Hollywood Shuffle), Keenan Ivory Wayans (In Living Colour, I'm Gonna Get You Sucka) and Warrington Hudlin (House Party). America is prolific when it comes to film, and she has logged over 60 years of independent black productions. From Oscar Micheaux to Spike Lee, strong black work has always been there. And it offered clear encouragement to aspiring African-American auteurs.

In Britain, the history of cinema is different - not to mention lily-white. And the way black British communities formed is recent as well as unique. The US knew slavery, apartheid and segregation; the UK has moved from colonialism to immigration. "Since the '50s," says Reece Auguiste, "we've existed in black America's shadow. Their art is always present here, and so are their politics. But, having made the effort to stay, we draw on many strands: English, Caribbean, African cultures. We're much more at ease than Americans with the idea of being mixed."

Black British filmmakers feel greater kinship with colleagues like Dutch director Felix le Rooy (Ava & Gabriel) or Paris-based Idrissa Ouedraogo (Yaaba) than they do with Brooklyn's Spike Lee or Tinseltown's Robert Townsend. John Akomfrah says it is an issue of artistic freedom. "Whatever message you want to send, in the US you have to work within genres. You do your thing as a jazz film or an action film or a thriller. Black Europeans can deal upfront with questions like memory and location."

"Nowhere," he adds, "has film fetishized the notion of journeys and travel more than in American movies. Yet, in actual experience, there's very little traffic of sensibilities, ideas and identities down those roads."

In a vote of cultural confidence, the BFI has just launched a black British film project of its own: a series of "video compilations" called Black By Popular Demand. This archive was curated by Programme Advisor June Givanni - who says it was partly made possible by the burst of world interest in black UK style. Givanni sees black cinema here as shaped by two traditions. One is the art school, with its emphasis on lifestyle and formal experimentation. The other is Britain's long history of documentary films. "We have such a strong history of those that the first impulse of black filmmakers was just to get out information. Then - when the next wave went to art-school - it also became important to find new ways of speaking onscreen."

"Here," she says, "You don't grow up with models of black film around you. You have to find them through study, training and cinema education. These black filmmakers had to reach out: they've consciously searched for new ways to present their feelings and claims."

Presentation and screen style are also crucial to building an audience. Says Karen Alexander, "I remember seeing black people on TV during the '70s - and it was lit so badly you couldn't even see their hair. So we try to mix our politics with an aesthetic that can communicate. We know you lose a black audience if your film doesn't look really good."

The sort of black chic Britain exports, she adds, has always been political. "We grew up with that. It was never just looking good and having great music at parties. Along with the good times and clubs and fashion came this whole awareness - of being black and of where that comes from. When I was little, my mother kept saying, "You know, we're African people.' And I would think, 'African! Good grief - I'm from Acct. Town!' But as you get older, it comes to you: Of course; of course, we are."

The way black identities are inherited as well as built forms the core of Sincerely Yours - and detonates the differences between UK-based heroine Lesley and US-based Michele. Alexander: "It's little seeds which get planted in you but only later germinate. The social reflections you do or don't have: the records, the hairstyles, the adverts. The black face looking back at you from the covers on a newsstand."

With its rich soul soundtrack and '70s artifact, Young Soul Rebels highlights the kind of roles such cultural ephemera play. In changing perspectives on punk, it also reveals the real roots of 1990s style. Isaac Julien: "In terms of black contributions, the punk years have been way underwritten. Black style has now become mainstream youth culture; the way all kids dress now is the way young black people dressed for years. That was something I especially wanted to emphases."

"Black music, style and moods," he says, "bring about certain onscreen nuances, nuances I used to shape the whole film. Certain parts of black culture - singing, dance, entertainment - have always been commodified. Even in fashion, these things are used time and time again. But very rarely have you had black people controlling that use."

For young black actors, scripts like Rebels and Who Needs A Heart? are unique. And directing Mysteries of July, Reece Auguiste says he noticed a marked generation gap in the cast. "Britain has strong theatrical traditions, and older black actors remain rooted in that universe. But the younger ones are very different. They know we've arrived at a point where they can be a distinctive voice."

Black British acting, he adds, owes a stylistic debt to America. "All these youngsters are slightly in awe of new American film. They genuinely respect people like Brando, De Niro and Washington. What they want is to bring that stuff into a new melting-pot: one in which it is possible to work directly on our black themes."

Such British themes often break new ground just by breaking cinema "rules": they marry street-style to luxury and give spiritual questions a sophisticated, urban frame. These apparent contradictions are in fact a celebration of roots. "Today's young black Briton," says June Givanni, "is really quite a hybrid. But still very rooted in his proximity to another culture - be that culture African or Afro-Caribbean. Our world is very different from the church and social structures of our parents and our grandparents. But it's not that far away, either. We know that world and we respect it.""

The changes they have witnessed and the ideals they continue to hold make these black filmmakers view their home as, in the end, a progressive nation. Most eschew Spike Lee's brand of black cultural separatism. "Only one Soul II Soul video had a black director," says Isaac Julien. "Yet, at the end of the day, what those promos put across was black British style. In the mass marketplace, where the selling really takes place, they put our lifestyles clearly in the foreground. Now, people around the world acknowledge there's something which is British which isn't Chariots of Fire. And that's very important."

When it comes to defining what is "British", style always plays a central part. But these directors want to use it; they want to assert truth over myth, history over nostalgia. "I like Young Soul Rebels so much," says John Akomfrah," because it charts black British style as a social force. Stuff like Brideshead Revisited makes the meaning of British history merely a question of kitsch. Something you buy into by getting the costumes right. As long as you have those clothes, those wigs, you don't have to ask any other questions."

The films John Akomfrah and his colleagues make will tell people elsewhere in the world more about Britain's black population. They will decode some of the fashion, unreel some untold stories. But establishing a black British cinema means facing even broader challenges.

Says John Akomfrah: "We're talking about a set of adventurers working out what 'multi-cultural' could really mean. And making films about it within a Europe asking the same questions. Questions about where you put the border, whether you need a border at all - and what you do with those things that stretch all the known kinds of boundaries."

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