Handsworth Songs - English subtitled
A powerful documentary about the 1985 riots in Handsworth and London, and the complex story of Black communities in Britain.
October 1985: riots erupt in cities like Birmingham and London. What followed was violence, looting, and tragic losses – including Joy Gardner, a Black woman, and Keith Blakelock, a white police officer – leaving a society torn apart by racial tensions. Handsworth Songs goes beyond the one-sided media coverage that demonised the protesters and reduced them to a single stereotype. The film places these events in a wider context of race, identity, and the sense of belonging in Britain.
John Akomfrah weaves together archive footage, interviews, self-shot material, and an expressive sound collage into a fragmentary montage that invites viewers to make their own connections. Handsworth Songs is regarded as a landmark in British auteur cinema and remains influential in terms of representation and social justice. Akomfrah, one of the founders of the Black Audio Film Collective, worked with other Black filmmakers to expose social inequality in Britain and reflect the unrest of the 1980s.
The screening on Monday 3 November at 19:30 takes place as part of Lumière x Viewmaster Projects: PROTEST, a series that explores the question: How do you give meaning to images of protest – past, present, and future?
Prior to the film, filmmaker Ayo Akingbade will give a short introduction via Zoom. She will discuss the historical and artistic context of the film and explain how this work has shaped her early filmmaking style.
In 2023–2024, Akingbade was an artist-in-residence at the Jan van Eyck Academie in Maastricht, after which she returned to London.