Cosponsor(s): Program in Visual Arts and Department of Art and Archaeology. The Black Earth series is supported through the John Sacret Young ’69 Lecture Series fund.

Event overview

Filmmaker John Akomfrah screens two of his films. The Call of Mist (Redux), set on a remote Scottish island, is an elegy to his late mother and a vivid meditation on death, memory and cloning. Initially commissioned in 1998 for the BBC, the 2012 re-edited version incorporates additional images that were removed from the television version, recovering Akomfrah’s original conception. Handsworth Songs (1986) is a richly layered documentary representing the hopes and dreams of post-war Black British people in the light of the civil disturbances of the 1980s. It engages with Britain’s colonial past, public and private memories, and the struggles of race and class. The title refers to the riots in Handsworth, Birmingham during September 1985. The soundtrack is influenced by reggae, punk and the post-industrial noise movement. Black Audio Film Collective was founded in 1982 by a group of sociology, psychology and fine art students. The Collective undertook all aspects of production and distribution of their films.