Menelik Shabazz, the director and writer who blazed a trail for black film-makers in the UK, has died. The news was confirmed to the Guardian by Shabazz’s daughter Nadia Denton, who said that the director died in Zimbabwe on Monday of diabetes-related complications. Shabazz was working on a new project, The Spirits Return, his first full-length fiction feature since his 1981 debut, Burning an Illusion.