Director Isaac Julien made this work in collaboration with Sankofa Film and Video, a media collective dedicated to exploring the place of black culture in the European experience. Territories was one of the group’s first productions to question the conventions of documentary film by including fictional dramatization. Looking at the history of Carnival in Britain as a subversive phenomenon, the film views cultures and languages as markers that attempt to define the boundaries of both metaphorical and real territories. Territories juxtaposes—and often superimposes—original and archival materials: footage of festive street life and rioting during Carnival, of police surveillance, of white and black British men and women exchanging desiring and alienated glances while vying for control of social space, and of the desolate urban evidence of abandonment and neglect.

Documentary and feature filmmaker John Akomfrah’s celebrated film essay on race and disorder in 1980s Britain—produced by the Black Audio Film Collective Akomfrah helped found—looks at the historical, social, and political background of the racial unrest of the era and the reasons for the anger and disillusionment felt by many from the ethnic communities in Britain, particularly Asian and West Indian. Filmed in Handsworth and London during the riots of 1985, this groundbreaking film also uses extensive newsreel and archival material, ranging from shots of colonial labor to images of Caribbean and Asian settlement. Handsworth Songs won numerous awards, including Stockholm’s Paul Robeson Prize for Cinema and the British Film Institute’s John Grierson Award for Social Documentary.