Handsworth Songs

synopsis

Visual and audio fragments from media archives are interwoven with the voices of immigrants from the Caribbean, Bangladesh, India, and Pakistan, who made up the majority of the population of Birmingham's Handsworth district. It was here that unexpectedly violent riots broke out in the fall of 1985. Footage of damaged streets intersects with testimonies of police brutality, photographs from community archives contrast with official memorials, and politicians' comments alternate with poetic voice-overs. The layered audio and visual montage create a political essay that challenges stereotypical images of immigrant communities and seeks new ways to tell their stories.

“When I wrote: ‘A Black teen bolts down a road, outruns four policemen, misses the slash of a baton, is brought down by a shield. They kettle him in, officer after officer after officer, piling on as he struggles to rise. They, now 8 against 1, shove him against a wall, where children are sitting and watching’ I couldn’t help recalling George Floyd’s death and the countless other Black men and women hunted and murdered in the UK and across the globe. It feels momentous to integrate audio description into a film that resonates so viscerally today.” — Elaine Lillian Joseph, Audio Description Script

Source: Slow emergency siren, ongoing

biography

Black Audio Film Collective was founded in 1982 and centred around Ghanaian-British artist Sir John Akomfrah. Founding members included producer Lina Gopaul, sound engineer Trevor Mathison, and director and theorist Reece Auguiste. Their debut, Handsworth Songs (1986), heralded the polyphonic essayistic form that characterizes the collective's other works, such as the palimpsestic portrait of London as a migration metropolis, Twilight City (1989), and the experimental sci-fi essay Memory Room 451 (1997). The collective ceased operations in 1998, and some of its members continued in the company Smoking Dogs Films.

film details

director:

Black Audio Film Collective, John Akomfrah