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Monday, February 17, 2025

Film festival honours influential director

by

20130922

Ghana­ian/British film leg­end John Akom­frah is vis­it­ing T&T for the first time un­der a show­er of praise for his lat­est doc­u­men­tary, The Stu­art Hall Project, which makes its Caribbean pre­miere at the film fes­ti­val here.The fes­ti­val is pay­ing trib­ute to Akom­frah, screen­ing five of his films, in­clud­ing Stu­art Hall.The film ex­plores the life and ideas of the left­ist Ja­maican/British aca­d­e­m­ic, broad­cast­er and com­men­ta­tor, who cre­at­ed and pop­u­larised cul­tur­al stud­ies and is cred­it­ed with de­vel­op­ing the con­cept of mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism."As an al­ter­na­tive his­to­ry of Britain in the last half cen­tu­ry, The Stu­art Hall Project... could hard­ly be bet­tered," went the re­view in the UK Guardian.The film "does jus­tice to Hall's words and his re­mark­able ca­reer," said the Tele­graph.The Stu­art Hall Project was al­so well-re­ceived at the Sun­dance Film Fes­ti­val ear­li­er this year.Plau­dits have be­come par for the course in Akom­frah's near-30-year ca­reer. Like Hall, Akom­frah is ad­mired for his in­tel­lect and fresh–some­times con­tro­ver­sial–way of look­ing at is­sues.Akom­frah was born in Ghana in 1957. His fa­ther was a mem­ber of Kwame Nkrumah's Cab­i­net. The fam­i­ly, fear­ing for their safe­ty, fled the coun­try af­ter the 1966 coup.Many of Akom­frah's films deal with the strug­gle of mi­grants and so­cial un­rest.In 1982 he and oth­er like-mind­ed artists found­ed the icon­ic Black Au­dio Film Col­lec­tive, which for 16 years sought to use dif­fer­ent me­dia to ex­press black thought in in­ven­tive ways.His first film, 1986's Handsworth Songs–which will be screened at Movi­eTowne to­mor­row, looked at the race-based ri­ots in that dis­trict the pre­vi­ous year.

Made for UK's Chan­nel 4, it won many awards.One of Akom­frah's nar­ra­tive films, 1986's Who Needs a Heart, will be screened at the Lit­tle Carib The­atre next Sun­day. Es­sen­tial­ly a silent film, it's backed by the work of ex­per­i­men­tal mu­si­cians, in­clud­ing John Coltrane and Or­nette Cole­man, and is based around the life of a Trinidad-born leader of the British Black Pow­er move­ment, Michael X. Born Michael De Fre­itas, he was hanged at the Port-of-Spain Roy­al Gaol in 1975 for mur­der.Akom­frah's com­pa­ny, Smok­ing Dogs Films, calls it the Black Au­dio Film Col­lec­tive's most con­tro­ver­sial film.The doc­u­men­tary short The Last An­gel of His­to­ry will air to­mor­row at Movi­eTowne. The film fes­ti­val says it's "one of the most in­flu­en­tial video-es­says of the 1990s." Last An­gel looks at and adopts the sur­re­al­is­tic style called afro­fu­tur­ism, made pop­u­lar by the mu­si­cians Sun Ra and George Clin­ton.An­oth­er short, the fic­tion­al film Peripeteia, will air at the Lit­tle Carib The­atre next Sun­day. It's a look at a 16th-cen­tu­ry black cou­ple that the film fes­ti­val calls "a beau­ti­ful­ly told sto­ry of alien­ation, loss and mem­o­ry."

Akom­frah is al­so get­ting praise for an­oth­er re­cent film, The March, a PBS doc­u­men­tary that pre­miered last month and looks at the 1963 March on Wash­ing­ton. He'd pre­vi­ous­ly done doc­u­men­taries on Mar­tin Luther King Jr, and on Mal­colm X and Louis Arm­strong.But Stu­art Hall has a spe­cial place in Akom­frah's heart.Hall was a big in­flu­ence on Akom­frah even be­fore the two met when the film­mak­er con­sult­ed with Hall on Handsworth Songs.In an in­ter­view last year, Akom­frah called Hall "one of my men­tors.""He helped my gen­er­a­tion, the young peo­ple whose par­ents were from im­mi­grant fam­i­lies, think about who we were and what we want to do with our lives," said Akom­frah."When I was a young per­son in the late 70s, ear­ly 80s, to hear him talk about what it means to be dif­fer­ent in a so­ci­ety was very, very im­por­tant. It gave you a sense of, not sim­ply of self, but of agency, of what you could do with your life," he said.

"So it seemed like a fit­ting trib­ute to be able to at some point use that life, my life, to do some­thing on his life."

John Akom­frah will be present for a Q&A at the sec­ond show­ing of The Stu­art Hall Project on Sat­ur­day at Movi­eTowne, Port-of-Spain. More in­fo on times and ad­di­tion­al screen­ings: ttfilm­fes­ti­val.com or 621-0709.


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