Africa Is a Country

John Akomfrah is Brilliant

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John Akomfrah is Brilliant

By
Sean Henry Jacobs

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

After the uprising

Years into Cameroon’s Anglophone conflict, the rebellion faces internal fractures, waning support, and military pressure—raising the question of what future, if any, lies ahead for Ambazonian aspirations.

In search of Saadia

Who was Saadia, and why has she been forgotten? A search for one woman’s story opens up bigger questions about race, migration, belonging, and the gaps history leaves behind.

Binti, revisited

More than two decades after its release, Lady Jaydee’s debut album still resonates—offering a window into Tanzanian pop, gender politics, and the sound of a generation coming into its own.

The bones beneath our feet

A powerful new documentary follows Evelyn Wanjugu Kimathi’s personal and political journey to recover her father’s remains—and to reckon with Kenya’s unfinished struggle for land, justice, and historical memory.

What comes after liberation?

In this wide-ranging conversation, the freedom fighter and former Constitutional Court justice Albie Sachs reflects on law, liberation, and the unfinished work of building a just South Africa.

The cost of care

In Africa’s migration economy, women’s labor fuels households abroad while their own needs are sidelined at home. What does freedom look like when care itself becomes a form of exile?

The memory keepers

A new documentary follows two women’s mission to decolonize Nairobi’s libraries, revealing how good intentions collide with bureaucracy, donor politics, and the ghosts of colonialism.

Making films against amnesia

The director of the Oscar-nominated film ‘Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat’ reflects on imperial violence, corporate warfare, and how cinema can disrupt the official record—and help us remember differently.