Movies: Black Audio Film Collective

  • 1986
    Handsworth Songs

    Handsworth Songs (1986)

    Handsworth Songs

    5.51986HD

    The Black Audio Film Collective’s acclaimed essay film, 'Handsworth Songs', examines the 1985 race riots in Handsworth and London. Interweaving archival photographs, newsreel clips, and home movie footage, the film is both an exploration of documenta...

    Handsworth Songs
  • 1993
    Seven Songs for Malcolm X

    Seven Songs for Malcolm X (1993)

    Seven Songs for Malcolm X

    01993HD

    The Black Audio Film Collective’s seventh film envisioned the death and life of the African American revolutionary as a seven part study in iconography as narrated by novelist Toni Cade Bambara and actor Giancarlo Espesito. The stylized tableaux viva...

    Seven Songs for Malcolm X
  • 1996
    The Last Angel of History

    The Last Angel of History (1996)

    The Last Angel of History

    6.71996HD

    An examination of the hitherto unexplored relationships between Pan-African culture, science fiction, intergalactic travel, and rapidly progressing computer technology....

    The Last Angel of History
  • 1988
    Testament

    Testament (1988)

    Testament

    01988HD

    Focuses on the Kwame Nkrumah era in Ghanaian history and paints a portrait of a female African government minister forced into exile after a coup d'état in 1966. Two decades later, she returns to confront the country she left behind....

    Testament
  • 1989
    Twilight City

    Twilight City (1989)

    Twilight City

    71989HD

    A fictional letter from a daughter, Olivia, to her mother in Dominica is the narrative thread connecting interviews from (predominantly) black and Asian cultural critics, historians and journalists. The choice of occupation for the daughter, a resear...

    Twilight City
  • 1991
    A Touch of the Tar Brush

    A Touch of the Tar Brush (1991)

    A Touch of the Tar Brush

    01991HD

    Black filmmaker John Akomfrah believes that, for too long, being English has meant being white. In an attempt to show Englishness from the point of view of mixed-race English people, he visits Liverpool, one of England's oldest multicultural communit...

    A Touch of the Tar Brush
  • 1991
    Who Needs a Heart

    Who Needs a Heart (1991)

    Who Needs a Heart

    01991HD

    The tumultuous life of the controversial 1960s black revolutionary (and convicted murderer) Michael X is illustrated by a kaleidoscopic melding of sound and images. The radically discordant free jazz soundtrack provides a surreal counterpoint to the ...

    Who Needs a Heart
  • 1996
    Memory Room 451

    Memory Room 451 (1996)

    Memory Room 451

    4.51996HD

    The subject matter of Memory Room 451 is the cultural and historical significance of 20th-century hairstyles – the Afro, the conk, dreadlocks – in Black communities on both sides of the Atlantic. Akomfrah has disguised this exploration as a science f...

    Memory Room 451
  • 1995
    Three Songs on Pain, Time and Light

    Three Songs on Pain, Time and Light (1995)

    Three Songs on Pain, Time and Light

    01995HD

    Three Songs on Pain, Time and Light is a video portrait in deliberately unbalanced colours, made by Trevor Mathison and Edward George and produced with Black Audio Film Collective....

    Three Songs on Pain, Time and Light
  • 1984
    Expeditions 2 – Images of Nationality

    Expeditions 2 – Images of Nationality (1984)

    Expeditions 2 – Images of Nationality

    01984HD

    Produced while the Black Audio Film Collective were undergraduates, Expeditions 2 – Images of Nationality is the second of a two-part 35mm slide- tape text entitled Expeditions; part one is entitled Signs of Empire. The work toured England from Novem...

    Expeditions 2 – Images of Nationality
  • 1983
    Expeditions 1 – Signs of Empire

    Expeditions 1 – Signs of Empire (1983)

    Expeditions 1 – Signs of Empire

    01983HD

    Produced while the Black Audio Film Collective were undergraduates, Expeditions 1 – Signs of Empire is the first of a two-part 35mm slide-tape text entitled Expeditions; part two is entitled Images of Nationality. The work toured England from Novembe...

    Expeditions 1 – Signs of Empire
  • 1991
    Mysteries of July

    Mysteries of July (1991)

    Mysteries of July

    01991HD

    Mysteries of July begins with the enigmatic death of young males in police custody. The film enacts an elaborate ritual of cinematic mourning that indicts the......

    Mysteries of July