Black Audio Film Collective

Last updated

The Black Audio Film Collective (BAFC), founded in 1982 and active until 1998, comprised seven Black British and diaspora multimedia artists and film makers: John Akomfrah, Lina Gopaul, Avril Johnson, Reece Auguiste, Trevor Mathison, Edward George and Claire Joseph. [1] Joseph left in 1985 and was replaced by David Lawson. The group initially came together as students at Portsmouth Polytechnic (their backgrounds included sociology, fine art and psychology), [2] and after graduation relocated to Hackney in east London.

Contents

Background

The formation of the Black Audio Film Collective, like that of Sankofa Film and Video Collective, was a response to the social unrest in Britain in the 1980s: "Influenced by contemporary debate on post-colonialism and social theorists such as Homi Bhabha and Stuart Hall, both groups centered around investigations of black identity/culture within the British experience and reworked the documentary to articulate new voices in British cinema." [3]

Style

The BAFC's output has been variously described as "an extraordinary body of poetic, allusive, and intensely personal films, videos, and 'slide-tape texts' that chronicled England’s multicultural past and present and pushed the boundaries of the documentary form", [4] and as "the expression of a generation of diasporic subjects that seized the idea of 'blackness' as an identity marker as well as a claim to political visibility." [5] The pioneering films they produced are still considered influential. [6] [7]

According to Guardian critic Adrian Searle, "the works the BAFC made during the 80s and early 1990s are almost shocking in their range.... The collective was heavily informed by film and psychoanalytic theory, by political discussion and debate.... Perhaps the most significant achievement of the group was the formulation of a poetic, a tone of voice, a particular kind of filmic space that resisted categorisation." [8] In the words of Kodwo Eshun, they "projected a stance of high seriousness with seductive stylishness". [8]

BAFC produced what the British Film Institute identifies as "some of the most challenging and experimental documentaries in Britain in the 1980s". [9] Notable among their oeuvre is 1986's Handsworth Songs , a film essay that makes unconventional use of newsreel and archive material of the autumn 1985 civil disturbances in Birmingham and London to explore memories of immigration and the different ways in which race was experienced and British society dealt with the black presence. [10] [11] Kodwo Eshun, writing in 2004, referred to the reputation of Handsworth Songs "as the most important and influential art film to emerge from England in the last twenty years." [12]

The collective was dissolved in 1998, [13] after which John Akomfrah, Lina Gopaul and David Lawson went on to found Smoking Dogs Films. [14] The first major retrospective of the BAFC, entitled The Ghosts of Songs, toured between 2 February and 1 April 2007. [15]

Selected filmography

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Institute of Contemporary Arts</span> Art and cultural centre in London

The Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) is an artistic and cultural centre on The Mall in London, just off Trafalgar Square. Located within Nash House, part of Carlton House Terrace, near the Duke of York Steps and Admiralty Arch, the ICA contains galleries, a theatre, two cinemas, a bookshop and a bar.

<i>Downtown 81</i> 2000 American film

Downtown 81 is a 2000 American film that was shot in 1980-1981. The film was directed by Edo Bertoglio and written and produced by Glenn O'Brien and Patrick Montgomery, with post-production in 1999-2000 by Glenn O'Brien and Maripol. It is a rare real-life snapshot of an ultra-hip subculture of post-punk era Manhattan. Starring renowned artist Jean-Michel Basquiat and featuring such East Village artists as James Chance, Amos Poe, Walter Steding, Tav Falco and Elliott Murphy, the film is a bizarre elliptical urban fairy tale. In 1999, Michael Zilkha, founder of ZE Records, became the film's executive producer.

The British Art Show (BAS) is a major survey exhibition organised every five years to showcase contemporary British Art. Each time it is organised, the show tours to four UK cities. It usually requires a number of venues in each city to accommodate it. As a snapshot of contemporary British Art, the exhibition has some equivalence to the biennial exhibitions of the Whitney Museum of American Art.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Isaac Julien</span> British artist and film director (born 1960)

Sir Isaac Julien is a British installation artist, filmmaker, and Distinguished Professor of the Arts at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ekow Eshun</span> British writer (born 1968)

Ekow Eshun is a British writer, journalist, broadcaster, and curator.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Haile Gerima</span> Ethiopian filmmaker

Haile Gerima is an Ethiopian filmmaker who lives and works in the United States. He is a leading member of the L.A. Rebellion film movement, also known as the Los Angeles School of Black Filmmakers. Since 1975, Haile has been a film professor at Howard University in Washington, D.C. He is best known for Sankofa (1993), which won two awards.

The Last Angel of History is a 45-minute documentary, directed in 1996 by John Akomfrah and written and researched by Edward George of the Black Audio Film Collective, that deals with concepts of Afrofuturism as a metaphor for the displacement of black culture and roots. The film is a hybrid documentary and fictional narrative. Documentary segments include traditional talking-head clips from musicians, writers, and social critics, as well as archival video footage and photographs. Described as "A truly masterful film essay about Black aesthetics that traces the deployments of science fiction within pan-African culture", it has also been called "one of the most influential video-essays of the 1990s, influencing filmmakers and inspiring conferences, novels and exhibitions".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kodwo Eshun</span> British-Ghanaian writer, theorist and filmmaker

Kodwo Eshun is a British-Ghanaian writer, theorist and filmmaker. He is perhaps best known for his 1998 book More Brilliant than the Sun: Adventures in Sonic Fiction and his association with the art collective The Otolith Group. He currently teaches on the MA in Contemporary Art Theory in the Department of Visual Cultures at Goldsmiths College, University of London, and at CCC Research Master Program of the Visual Arts Department at HEAD.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">John Akomfrah</span> British artist, filmmaker, curator (born 1957)

Sir John Akomfrah is a British artist, writer, film director, screenwriter, theorist and curator of Ghanaian descent, whose "commitment to a radicalism both of politics and of cinematic form finds expression in all his films".

Seven Songs for Malcolm X is a British documentary film about the life of Malcolm X, the influential civil rights activist who was assassinated in 1965. The film was written and directed by John Akomfrah, with co-writer Edward George, and produced by Lina Gopaul. The Black Audio Film Collective, Akomfrah's London-based company, and Channel 4 Television Corporation were both involved in the production of the film. It was first aired at the Toronto Festival of Festivals in Canada, on 15 September 1993, and then at the Chicago International Film Festival in October 1993. On 15 March 2009, it was released in the Czech Republic at the One World Film Festival. The film was distributed by Channel 4 Television Company. It was filmed in London and has a runtime of 52 minutes.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Vanley Burke</span> British Jamaican photographer and artist (born 1951)

Vanley Burke is a British Jamaican photographer and artist. His photographs capture experiences of his community's arrival in Britain, the different landscapes and cultures he encountered, the different ways of survival and experiences of the wider African-Caribbean community.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">1985 Handsworth riots</span> 1985 riots in Birmingham, England

The second Handsworth riots took place in the Handsworth district of Birmingham, West Midlands, from 9 to 11 September 1985. The riots were reportedly sparked by the arrest of a man near the Acapulco Cafe, Lozells and a police raid on the Villa Cross public house in the same area. Hundreds of people attacked police and property, looting and smashing, even setting off fire bombs.

Sampledelia is sample-based music that uses samplers or similar technology to expand upon the recording methods of 1960s psychedelia. Sampledelia features "disorienting, perception-warping" manipulations of audio samples or found sounds via techniques such as chopping, looping or stretching. Sampladelic techniques have been applied prominently in styles of electronic music and hip hop, such as trip hop, jungle, post-rock, and plunderphonics.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Reboot.fm</span> Radio station in Berlin, Potsdam

reboot.fm is an artist-run radio station broadcasting on 88.4 FM in Berlin, and 99.7 FM in Potsdam, Germany. The non-commercial radio is run by klubradio Gmbh and housed in the kunstlerhaus Acud and formerly in the House of World Cultures, Berlin. The station is run by four permanent staff members, including founders Diana McCarty and Pit Schultz. It was founded in 2004. Since 2019, reboot.fm broadcasts on non-profit license via the Radio Netzwerk Berlin e.V. that it co-founded with partners, Cashmere Radio, Wearebornfree! Empowerment Radio, Savvy Funk, Bln.FM and radio mobile.

<i>The Stuart Hall Project</i> 2013 British film

The Stuart Hall Project is a 2013 British film written and directed by John Akomfrah centred on cultural theorist Stuart Hall, who is regarded as one of the founding figures of the New Left and a key architect of Cultural Studies in Britain. The film uses a montage of documentary footage together with Hall's own words and thoughts to produce what Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian called "an absorbing account", awarding it four stars and stating that it has "an idealism and high seriousness that people might not immediately associate with the subject Hall pioneered". Sight & Sound magazine's Ashley Clark described it as "a strongly personal work" that "unfolds simultaneously as a tribute to a heroic figure, a study of the emergence of the New Left and its attendant political ideas, and a summation, in thematic and technical terms, of the key characteristics of Akomfrah’s body of work thus far ."

Handsworth Songs is a 1986 British documentary film directed by John Akomfrah and produced by Lina Gopaul. It was filmed during the 1985 riots in Handsworth and London. The production company was the Black Audio Film Collective, who also wrote the screenplay. With cinematography by Sebastian Shah and music by Trevor Mathison, there were voice-overs by Pervais Khan, Meera Syal, Yvonne Weekes, Sachkhand Nanak Dham and Mr. McClean.

The Unfinished Conversation is a 2012 multi-layered three-screen installation directed by John Akomfrah, co-founder of the Black Audio Film Collective. Through his celebrated technique of juxtaposing and layering archive footage with text, music and photographs, Akomfrah crosses the memory landscape of Stuart Hall, Jamaican-born founder of British Cultural Studies, to reflect on the nature and complexities of memory and identity. The Unfinished Conversation was commissioned by Autograph ABP. It opened at Tate Britain, London, on 26 October 2013, following its premiere at Bluecoat during the 2012 Liverpool Biennial.

Sankofa Film and Video Collective was founded in 1983 by Isaac Julien, Martina Attille, Maureen Blackwood, Nadine Marsh-Edwards and Robert Crusz, who all graduated from various art colleges in London. Supported by the Greater London Council, the British Film Institute and Channel 4, among others, Sankofa was "dedicated to developing an independent black film culture in the areas of production, exhibition and audience". The name and the logo of the collective derive from the Akan word sankofa from Ghana, meaning "return and fetch it", represented figuratively as a bird turning its head back towards its tail, to signify "going back into the past and discovering knowledge that will be of benefit to the people in the future."

Vertigo Sea is a 48-minute immersive three-channel video installation created by the British artist and filmmaker John Akomfrah in 2015. It is a meditation on man's relationship with the sea and explores issues including the history of slavery, migration, conflict, and ecological concerns such as whale and polar bear hunting and nuclear testing. It combines original footage filmed on the Isle of Skye, the Faroe Islands and the Northern regions of Norway, with archival material primarily from the BBC Natural History Unit. It also draws inspiration from two literary works: Moby-Dick by Herman Melville and the poem Whale Nation by Heathcote Williams. It premiered at the 56th Venice Biennale in 2015 which was curated by Okwui Enwezor.

References

  1. ↑ Mercer, Kobena (Spring 2015). "Becoming Black Audio: An Interview with John Akomfrah and Trevor Mathison". Black Camera. 6 (2). Indian University Press: 79–93. doi:10.2979/blackcamera.6.2.79. JSTOR   10.2979/blackcamera.6.2.79. S2CID   161454062.
  2. ↑ Clark, Ashley (3 March 2014). "Rep Diary: Black Audio Film Collective". Film Comment.
  3. ↑ "Black Audio & Sankofa Film Collectives". Cinema Project.
  4. ↑ "Black Audio Film Collective", BAMcinématek.
  5. ↑ "Black Audio Film Collective" Archived 28 October 2014 at the Wayback Machine , CENCIA, Georgia State University.
  6. ↑ The Otolith Group, "This Day Remains" Archived 2014-10-28 at the Wayback Machine , Frieze, Issue 106, April 2007.
  7. ↑ Celluloid Liberation Front, "Handsworth, 1985: Re-writing the riots – The Black Audio Film Collective's film still resonates", New Statesman, 24 September 2012.
  8. 1 2 Adrian Searle, "Voices of the rising tide", The Guardian, 27 February 2007.
  9. ↑ Paul Ward, "Black Audio Film Collective (1982-98)", BFScreenonline.
  10. ↑ "Handsworth Songs. Film by John Akomfrah and the Black Audio Film Collective, 1986". Birmingham Black Oral history project.
  11. ↑ Ann Ogidi, "Handsworth Songs (1986)", BFI Screenonline.
  12. ↑ Kodwo Eshun, "Untimely Meditations: Reflections on the Black Audio Film Collective", Nka: Journal of Contemporary African Art, Number 19, Summer 2004, pp. 38–45. Excerpt at Project Muse.
  13. ↑ "Black Audio Film Collective" Archived 2014-10-18 at the Wayback Machine , Iniva.
  14. ↑ "Smoking Dogs Films". Archived from the original on 20 February 2015. Retrieved 28 October 2014.
  15. ↑ "The Ghosts of Songs: A Retrospective of the BLack Audio Film Collective 1982 – 1998. Curated by the Ololith Group" Archived 24 September 2015 at the Wayback Machine . The Black Audio Film Collective at Smoking Dogs Films.
  16. ↑ "Signs of Empire" on YouTube.

Further reading

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.