A founding figure in Black British cinema, John Akomfrah is an artist, writer, critic, and filmmaker. Internationally recognized for his long-time tenure with the London-based media workshop Black Audio Film Collective (of which he was one of the founders in 1982), he formalized his focus on issues of Black British identity by developing an array of media adequate for and relevant to the representation of that identity. He made his directorial debut with the seminal, prize-winning Handsworth Songs (1986), a film that began a career-long artistic odyssey in the reconfiguration of documentary conventions for contemporary Black British experience. Other works include Testament (1988), about an African politician remanded to exile after a coup d’état; Who Needs a Heart? (1991) and Seven Songs for Malcolm X (1993), both concerning the advent of Black power in Britain; and Speak like a Child (1998), a psychological drama. Akomfrah is a former governor of the British Film Institute.
Seminar Reading
"John Akomprah in conversation with Kowdo Eshun: an absence of ruins." In: Ghost of songs: the film art of the British Audio Film Collective, 1982-1998. Edited by Kowdo Eshun and Anjalika Sagar. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press; Foundation for Art and Creative Technology, 2007: 130-137.
Additional Screening: THE LAST ANGEL OF HISTORY
Public Programs for Renée Green’s Endless Dreams and Time-Based Streams at YBCA
Yerba Buena Center for the Arts
April 24, 2010, 2 pm
The Last Angel of History examines the hitherto unexplored relationships between Pan-African culture, science fiction, intergalactic travel, and rapidly progressing computer technology. This cinematic essay posits science fiction (with tropes such as alien abduction, estrangement, and genetic engineering) as a metaphor for the Pan-African experience of forced displacement, cultural alienation, and otherness.
