Handsworth Songs + The People’s Account

The first film by the renowned Sankofa Film and Video Collective offers a mosaic impression of the different dimensions of Black experience.

Featuring an introduction by series programmer Ashley Clark preceding the May 5 screening.
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The People’s Account (1986)
Dir. Milton Bryan
50min, digital

Made in response to the 1985 Broadwater Farm uprising in Tottenham against police violence, this early film from Ceddo Film and Video Workshop (founded by Menelik Shabazz, amongst others) offers a radical analysis of British society’s treatment of Black Britons. Made for public broadcaster Channel 4, the film’s depiction of racist police and assertion that the uprisings were legitimate political action ran afoul of the Independent Broadcasting Authority (IBA). Ceddo refused to cede to editorial changes demanded by the IBA, and the film has never been broadcast on British television

Handsworth Songs (1986)
Dir. John Akomfrah
61 min, DCP

One of the defining works by the influential Black Audio Film Collective, this freeform documentary mosaic explores racial tensions in Britain through the lens of the 1985 Handsworth riots that rocked Birmingham. Through an impressionistic mélange of newsreel footage, photographs, interviews, tableau vivants, and sonic experimentation, Handsworth Songs resounds as a powerful and singular statement of Black British presence.