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Handsworth Songs

Directed by John Akomfrah

Peripeteia

Directed by John Akomfrah
John Akomfrah & Lina Gopaul in person
$12 Special Event Tickets

00:00 / 00:00
      Handsworth Songs and Peripteia introduction and post-screening discussion with David Pendleton, John Akomfrah and Lina Gopaul.

      PROGRAM

      • Handsworth Songs

        Directed by John Akomfrah.
        UK, 1986, digital video, color and b&w, 61 min.

      The Handsworth area of Birmingham has historically been a gritty working-class neighborhood, housing workers for nearby factories and foundries. By the 1980s, it was home to large populations of Caribbean and Sikh immigrants, and was the site of rioting in 1981 and 1985. In Akomfrah’s achingly poetic first film, he both documents the riots and their immediate aftermath but also recalls the everyday lives of longtime residents. How did the bright hopes of those who arrived in the 1950s give way to the feelings of rage or hopelessness expressed in the rioting? In the years since the film was made, Handsworth has been the site of further rioting.

      • Peripeteia

        Directed by John Akomfrah.
        2012, digital video, color, 18 min.

      Akomfrah imagines the lives of the African models for two Albrecht Dürer drawings by presenting a man and a woman wandering in desolate landscapes marked by a foreboding, chilly beauty.

      Part of film series

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      John Akomfrah.
      A Poet in the Archives

      Current and upcoming film series

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      The Reincarnations of Delphine Seyrig

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      Ben Rivers, Back to the Land

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      Harvard Undergraduate Cinematheque

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      Make Way for Tomorrow. Carson Lund’s Eephus

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      Jessica Sarah Rinland’s Collective Monologue

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      David Lynch, New Dimensions

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      Museum Hours: Mati Diop’s Dahomey

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      Albert Serra, or Cinematic Time Regained

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      Wang Bing’s Youth Trilogy