John Akomfrah is Brilliant

British filmmaker John Akonfrah will be artist-in-residence this Spring at New York University's Institute of African American Affairs.

British filmmaker John Akonfrah born in Ghana and raised in Britain, is a brilliant filmmaker. He has made almost 20 films (including on Martin Luther King Jnr. and Malcolm X).  Try and see his 1986 film “Handsworth Songs,” about racism and racial violence in 1980s Britain; a masterpiece. There’s also “The Last Angel of History/Mothership Connection” (1995). I have also heard great things about his most recent film, “Mnemosyne.”

Take “Handsworth Songs,” it went on to win seven international prizes, including the prestigious John Grierson Award for Best Documentary from the British Film Institute.  Here’s Pam Cook’s review in Sight & Sound when it was first released:

Variously described as a ‘documentary’ and a ‘film essay’ on race and civil disorder in Britain today, Handsworth Songs, as its title suggests, in fact owes more to poetic structures than to didactic exposition. Familiar TV and newspaper reportage is juxtaposed with opaque, elusive imagery, newsreel and archive material is reworked, and sound is pitted against image to release a multitude of unanswered questions about the underlying causes of ‘racial unrest’. The result is a powerful combination of anger and analysis, of lyricism and political strategy, elegy and excavation.

Akomfrah will be artist-in-residence this Spring at New York University.

He will be joined by the Ethiopian-American musician Meklit Hadero. The institute has several events planned around these two with the theme “The African Diaspora And/In The World.” They’re described as being “at the forefront of … [the] politics of new Pan-Africanism formations.” The institute’s website does not say much else as to what that implies (nor do the email notices I received about Akomfrah’s visit), so we’ll find out over the next two months.

It is the first time I hear of Hadero, but

At various points Akomfrah and Hadero will be joined by filmmaker Jean-Pierre Bekolo (from Cameroon), academic and poet Fred Moten, some of the participants of the Black Portrait Symposium, Ethiopian-American musician Danny Mekonnen, and artist Coco Fusco.

Details here.

Further Reading

The sound of revolt

On his third album, Afro-Portuguese artist Scúru Fitchádu fuses ancestral wisdom with urban revolt, turning memory and militancy into a soundtrack for resistance.

O som da revolta

No seu terceiro álbum, o artista afro-português Scúru Fitchádu funde a sabedoria ancestral com a revolta urbana, transformando memória e militância em uma trilha sonora para a resistência.

Biya forever

As Cameroon nears its presidential elections, a disintegrated opposition paves the way for the world’s oldest leader to claim a fresh mandate.

From Cornell to conscience

Hounded out of the United States for his pro-Palestine activism, Momodou Taal insists that the struggle is global, drawing strength from Malcolm X, faith, and solidarity across borders.

After the uprising

Following two years of mass protest, Kenya stands at a crossroads. A new generation of organizers is confronting an old question: how do you turn revolt into lasting change? Sungu Oyoo joins the AIAC podcast to discuss the vision of Kenya’s radical left.

Redrawing liberation

From Gaza to Africa, colonial cartography has turned land into property and people into populations to be managed. True liberation means dismantling this order, not redrawing its lines.

Who deserves the city?

Colonial urbanism cast African neighborhoods as chaotic, unplanned, and undesirable. In postcolonial Dar es Salaam, that legacy still shapes who builds, who belongs, and what the middle class fears the city becoming.

Djinns in Berlin

At the 13th Berlin Biennale, works from Zambia and beyond summon unseen forces to ask whether solidarity can withstand the gaze of surveillance.

Colonize then, deport now

Trump’s deportation regime revives a colonial blueprint first drafted by the American Colonization Society, when Black lives were exiled to Africa to safeguard a white republic.