Si­mon Lee

He bounces in­to the Hy­att lob­by like a friend­ly smok­ing dog, giv­ing no hint of transat­lantic jet­lag; eyes flash­ing en­joy­ment, cu­rios­i­ty. Black jeans, black jer­sey and nat­ty locks; black cof­fee, Marl­bor­ough cig­a­rettes and a berth on the wa­ter­front pa­tio.

We're set to go, and just like the re­lief John Akom­frah tells me he felt ar­riv­ing in Lon­don in the 1960s, af­ter flee­ing the com­ing coup in Ghana, I sense my celebri­ty anx­i­ety evap­o­rat­ing in the wake of the Spir­it of T&T as it slides dock­side.

He's just a nor­mal guy, one of those street- and world-savvy broth­ers I used to en­counter in the squats, gal­leries, re­hearsal stu­dios of West Lon­don in the time of God Save the Queen, Long Live the Facist Regime, when cool Bri­tan­nia was forced to look for the miss­ing black in the Union Jack.

But then I have to re­mem­ber this en­tire­ly unas­sum­ing fel­low-smok­er en­joys oth­er iden­ti­ties: di­as­poric trav­eller and thinker; mov­ing force of black British cin­e­ma; mul­ti-award-win­ning ex­per­i­men­tal doc­u­men­tary and fea­ture film writer/di­rec­tor and pi­o­neer of dig­i­tal film­mak­ing.

Akom­frah car­ries all his ac­co­lades (in­clud­ing a 2008 OBE for his con­tri­bu­tion to the British film in­dus­try) with that same light­ness as he dis­pens­es po­et­ic epi­grams or ref­er­ences to cul­tur­al the­o­ry, which might oth­er­wise grind a con­ver­sa­tion to mi­graine or awk­ward si­lence. He was in town for the TTFF, which this year paid trib­ute to his work and screened five of his films in­clud­ing his lat­est, The Stu­art Hall Project, his own trib­ute to the Ja­maican-British in­tel­lec­tu­al re­spon­si­ble for con­test­ing, shift­ing and de­con­struct­ing the delu­sion of mono­lith­ic British cul­ture, in­tro­duc­ing the more flu­id con­cepts of mul­ti (cul­tur­al) di­as­poric aes­thet­ics and iden­ti­ties and a mul­ti-dis­ci­pli­nary ap­proach (cul­tur­al stud­ies) with which to analyse them.

It was Hall who pro­vid­ed the voice, ex­am­ple and com­mit­ment for the mil­i­tant 1970s cadre of black British youth, from which Akom­frah grad­u­at­ed, to frame their col­lec­tive as­sault on the cen­tre, and to open di­a­logues which be­sides chal­leng­ing an as­sumed cul­tur­al hege­mo­ny are es­pe­cial­ly rel­e­vant now when the en­gine of neo-lib­er­al­ism threat­ens all "Oth­er" dis­cours­es.

When he was born in Ac­cra, Ghana in 1957, both Akom­frah's par­ents were po­lit­i­cal ac­tivists tar­get­ed in the an­ti-Nkrumah back­lash, which cul­mi­nat­ed in the coup which re­moved him.

"It was clear some­thing re­al­ly bad had hap­pened. The drag­net was clos­ing in...The neigh­bours be­hind our house were chant­i­ng 'You're next.'"

Es­cap­ing to the anonymi­ty of Lon­don with his moth­er was a huge re­lief for a small scared boy: "I loved it, not stand­ing out, be­ing a tar­get."

Lon­don, as it was ini­tial­ly for Lord Kitch­en­er, was the place for Akom­frah and con­tin­ues to be: "I con­sid­er my­self a Lon­don­er more than any­thing; it's the place I know the most."

Like many oth­er di­as­poric refugees, trav­ellers and no­mads, for him the ex­pe­ri­ence of liv­ing and work­ing in the colo­nial-cum-post­colo­nial cen­tre, what Mar­ti re­ferred to as "the bel­ly of the beast," catal­ysed an ex­plo­ration of di­as­poric iden­ti­ty, the prax­is sug­gest­ed by Stu­art Hall's the­o­ris­ing: "The di­as­po­ra ex­pe­ri­ence...is de­fined not by essence or pu­ri­ty, but by a recog­ni­tion of a nec­es­sary het­ero­gene­ity, di­ver­si­ty; by a con­cep­tion of 'iden­ti­ty' which lives with and through, not de­spite, dif­fer­ence; by hy­brid­i­ty."

It's no ex­ag­ger­a­tion to note that Akom­frah, along with oth­ers like Paul Gilroy of Black At­lantic fame and the Eng­lish cul­tur­al the­o­rist Dick Heb­di­ge, young black British reg­gae band Aswad, Punk sub­ver­sives The Sex Pis­tols and cross-over bands like Mad­ness and The Spe­cials were re­spon­si­ble for de­con­struct­ing Lon­don's nor­ma­tive cul­ture and by ex­ten­sion, no­tions of "British­ness." As he fond­ly re­marks of his home­town: "If I have any roots to speak of, they're there. I helped make it."

As "a book­ish young­ster" grow­ing up in west Lon­don dur­ing the in­cen­di­ary late 1970s, Akom­frah spent time "trou­ble­mak­ing...or­gan­is­ing stu­dent oc­cu­pa­tions" and chal­leng­ing the in­sti­tu­tion­al racism he re­alised had ob­struct­ed di­as­poric el­ders like Trinida­di­an film­mak­er Ho­race Ove in their in­di­vid­ual ef­forts.

Aware of the pow­er­play be­tween pol­i­tics and cul­ture, he ob­serves; "It's a fine-fit­ting suit, you need the el­e­gance to wear it well."

An­oth­er les­son learnt was that col­lec­tive rather than in­di­vid­ual ac­tion was need­ed.

There was any­thing but el­e­gance in the punk ex­plo­sion of 1976/7, which quick­ly forged al­liances be­tween white work­ing class and black British youth.

"When the Sex Pis­tols swore and abused Bill Grundy on his own TV show, it lift­ed the lid. We thought 'We're off now.' It was a gen­er­a­tional thing."

For Akom­frah liv­ing with­in walk­ing dis­tance of de­sign­er Vivi­enne West­wood and im­pre­sario Mal­colm McLaren's shop, Sex, and film di­rec­tor Don Lett's An­ti­quar­ius shop on the New King's Road (hot meet­ing spots for this new gen­er­a­tion of sedi­tionar­ies) punk was lo­calised, its cen­trifu­gal im­pe­tus spi­ralling out from his own "manor," as they say in Lon­don.

Akom­frah points out it's hard from our po­si­tion in 2013 to ful­ly grasp "the rebel spir­it of the 1970s against the back­drop of shared as­sump­tions" about so­cial re­spon­si­bil­i­ty, when this has been re­placed by the stark log­ic of: "You're on your own."

For the young Akom­frah, "It was the first time you sensed that an al­liance of those on the mar­gins had made a seis­mic dif­fer­ence to the cen­tre."

In those rip-up days of de­fi­ance, as "the UK dealt with its post­colo­nial sta­tus" the "do-It-your­self aes­thet­ic of punk was in­stant."

Young black kids sev­ered both from their di­as­poric roots and the colo­nial at­ti­tudes of their im­mi­grant par­ents' gen­er­a­tion "had a cri­sis of iden­ti­ty, they didn't know whether they be­longed." Like their white work­ing-class com­pa­tri­ots, "every­body was look­ing for some­thing, they didn't quite know what."

Stu­art Hall pro­vid­ed Akom­frah and oth­er di­as­poric youth with some kind of co­her­ence amid the flux of the times.

"He'd come from a colo­nial space to the heart of the metro­pole and re­ject­ed the Mim­ic Man colo­nial im­age."

Hall made sense of the pop­u­lar cul­ture erupt­ing in the cen­tre, while si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly chal­leng­ing (racist and gen­dered) no­tions of British cul­tur­al ho­mo­ge­neous hege­mo­ny.

Evolv­ing from col­lec­tive ac­tion in school, then the clubs and fi­nal­ly the po­lit­i­cal stage, Akom­frah al­so found in­spi­ra­tion in the work of Kenyan writer/ac­tivist Ngu­gi wa Thiong'o. While still a stu­dent he staged Ngu­gi's play The Death of Dedan Ki­mathi about the Mau Mau leader hanged by the British in 1957 and cred­its Ngu­gi for alert­ing him to the cru­cial is­sue of "Na­tion Lan­guage."

The im­pe­tus for col­lec­tive ac­tion "To set up a posse, some kin­da army" led to the for­ma­tion of the Black Au­dio Film Col­lec­tive in 1982. Search­ing for point­ers in their project of do­ing some­thing dif­fer­ent, the col­lec­tive em­braced the work of Ben­gali film­mak­ers like Ritwik Ghatak and Satya­jit Ray ("cen­tral for the dis­cus­sion about tra­di­tion and in­no­va­tion"), the Cuban cin­e­ma of the 1960s, ear­ly Russ­ian film and mil­i­tant Eu­ro­pean cineast­es like Go­dard. All these "gave a sense of pos­si­bil­i­ties."

While much of Akom­frah's work, first with the col­lec­tive and more re­cent­ly with his own Smok­ing Dogs Films com­pa­ny from Handsworth Songs (1986) right down to his doc­u­men­taries on Mal­colm X (1993) and Mar­tin Luther King (1997) and the lat­est on Stu­art Hall ,may ini­tial­ly strike au­di­ences as so­cio-po­lit­i­cal, there are no hard lines. Ex­per­i­men­ta­tion and a will­ing­ness to en­gage in a mul­ti-dis­ci­pli­nary ap­proach al­ways in­form his work. Mu­sic fea­tures promi­nent­ly (cf the Miles Davis sound­track to the Hall doc­u­men­tary).

"Dub and free jazz are two im­por­tant mu­si­cal sen­si­bil­i­ties which are im­por­tant in what I've done," he ex­plains. "That's what's great about artis­tic im­puls­es, they're be­yond ei­ther/or (lim­it­ing bi­na­rism). I don't need to ful­ly un­der­stand the the­o­ret­i­cal ba­sis to work. In the space of art you get to ex­per­i­ment...Hold­ing con­ver­sa­tions with oth­er art forms you trust the di­a­logue with the Oth­er. I don't know the an­swer but when it comes to­geth­er this way it moves me, maybe it can move you."

Ex­per­i­men­ta­tion, play­ful­ness and es­pe­cial­ly hu­mour are all in­trin­sic el­e­ments of Akom­frah's ap­proach and these give his work an or­gan­ic and po­et­ic qual­i­ty, which far more pow­er­ful­ly con­veys mul­ti­ple mean­ing rather than any so­cial re­al­ism.

Like Hall, he has con­test­ed the bounds and bound­aries of iden­ti­ty, of race and gen­der and a time worn and ir­rel­e­vant cul­tur­al hege­mo­ny.

"In this pe­ri­od of flux, how do we con­tin­ue to name? There's a fa­tal­i­ty of mis­un­der­stand­ing about iden­ti­ty."

The "glacial shift in British iden­ti­ty" he has been ac­tive in was achieved by "walk­ing in the cen­tre and mak­ing a di­a­logue." Re­view­ing his own life ex­pe­ri­ence, he's em­phat­ic that "I'm an ag­gre­gate of pre­vi­ous mo­ments, from the boy ter­ri­fied of the mil­i­tary to the kid who met a bunch of oth­er black kids."

Akom­frah's con­tri­bu­tion to trans­form­ing pop­u­lar cul­ture, of con­tin­u­ing the project of Eman­ci­pa­tion, help­ing us to ac­cept the mul­ti-iden­ti­ty na­ture and com­plex­i­ty not on­ly of di­as­poric life but the hu­man con­di­tion it­self, shows us "oth­er ways to rev­o­lu­tion­ary trans­for­ma­tion rather than vi­o­lence."

As he puts it so elo­quent­ly: "The com­plex­i­ty of be­ing pre­sup­pos­es any iden­ti­ty. Every­body is from mul­ti­ple lo­ca­tions. The hu­man con­di­tion is un­der­pinned by flu­id­i­ty, flux and tur­bu­lence."