Documentaries

THE NINE MUSES

John Akomfrah
GBR, Ghana 2010
96 min
V'11

Sharing some thematic and aesthetic ground with his widely acclaimed gallery piece «Mnemosyne», but developing and extending the focus, The Nine Muses confirms John Akomfrah as one of the UK’s most singular and visionary filmmakers. In this work of uncommon intelligence, a vast array of archival material is combined with newly shot scenes to form a series of tone poems that feel, rather than tell, the history of mass migration to postwar Britain. Existential science fiction provides the inspiration and Homer’s «The Odyssey» the narrative underpinning, just two of a host of cultural reference points that inform this absorbing allegorical fable. Writings from authors as diverse as Shakespeare, Samuel Beckett and T.S. Eliot are woven together with music that ranges from popular songs to Purcell and Schubert. Akomfrah’s investigation of identity, memory and myth is breathtaking but understated, and social history is rarely re-imagined as lyrically as this. (Sandra Hebron)

Credits
  • Trevor Mathison
  • David Lawson
  • John Akomfrah
  • John Akomfrah
  • Dewald Aukema
  • Robin Fellows
  • Miikka Leskinen
  • Trevor Mathison
  • Sean Barrett
  • John Barrymore
  • Richard Burton
  • Dermot Crowley
  • Teresa Gallagher
  • Alex Jennings
  • Anton Lesser
  • Jim Norton
  • Michael Sheen
  • Josette Simon
  • Heathcote Williams
Smoking Dogs Films

Cactus Three Films

35 mm
bwcol
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