HANDSWORTH SONGS

Handsworth Songs, directed by John Akomfrah, was the first major film of the Black Audio Film Collective. It explores the origins of the uprisings by black communities in Handsworth, Birmingham in 1985. Its themes are race, memory, ideology and Britain's colonial past. «The song», writes Michael O'Pray, «is a cultural form which can dig as deep as any analysis ... The poetry of song ... is a potent weapon, that for centuries has been used powerfully by the colonisers themselves.»

This film is part of the program Films of John Akomfrah.