As well as writing and performing poetry in London, Nazareth worked as a journalist contributing to the radical political magazine
The Leveller and to
Time Out, where he was later a member of the group that set up the alternative listings magazine
City Limits in 1981. which led to the creation of an independent production company named Penumbra. In 1983, Penumbra Productions made a 60-minute film,
Talking History (directed by Nazareth), featuring
C. L. R. James in dialogue with
E. P. Thompson, and Penumbra also filmed a series of six of James's lectures, shown on
Channel 4 television, the topics being:
Shakespeare; cricket; American society;
Solidarity in Poland; the Caribbean; and Africa. Nazareth was producer of the magazine show
Sunday East for Channel 4 in the 1980s. He and director
Faris Kermani formed the company Azad Productions (1984–1989) with a focus on programmes for people from the Indian subcontinent, such as in 1986 the television documentaries
A Fearful Silence in 1986 (about domestic violence in the Asian community), and
A Corner of a Foreign Field (directed by
Udayan Prasad) on the lives of Pakistanis in the UK. Among the films Nazareth has produced are
Suffer the Children (1988, on
apartheid South Africa),
Doctors and Torture (1990, about medical involvement in torture in Latin America),
China Rocks: The Long March of Cui Jian (1991);
Bombay and Jazz (1992), and
Stories My Country Told Me, on culture and nationalism. Nazareth published a poetry collection, entitled
Lobo, in 1984. In addition to writing for
The Leveller, as a journalist he has written for such publications as the
New Statesman,
New African and
Marxism Today. He is a contributor to
Reflected in Water: Writings on Goa (Penguin India, 2006), edited by
Jerry Pinto. ==Selected filmography==