Early Monthly Segments

Early Monthly Segments is proud to present a rare 16mm print of Black Audio Film Collective’s Handsworth Songs. The film takes as its point of departure the civil disturbances of September and October 1985 in the Birmingham district of Handsworth and in the urban centres of London. Running throughout Handsworth Songs is the idea that the riots were the outcome of a protracted suppression by British society of black presence. The film portrays civil disorder as an opening onto a secret history of dissatisfaction that is connected to the national drama of industrial decline. The ‘Songs’ of the title do not reference musicality but instead invoke the idea of documentary as a poetic montage of associations from British documentarians John Grierson & Humphrey Jennings.

Preceded by Paul Winkler’s Dark, a heavily-abstracted document of Aboriginal Land Claim demonstrations in the 1970s.

Inaugurated in the UK in 1982 and dissolved in 1998, the seven-person Black Audio Film Collective (BAFC) included John Akomfrah, Reece Auguiste, Edward George, Lina Gopaul, Avril Johnson, David Lawson and Trevor Mathison and produced award winning film, photography, slide, video, installation, posters, interventions: blackaudiofilmcollective.com

Programme:
Handsworth Songs, Black Audio Film Collective, 1986, 16mm, UK, 60 min.
Dark, Paul Winkler, 1974, 16mm, Australia, 19 min.

 

@ The Gladstone Hotel Ballroom | 1214 Queen Street West
Monday, September 19, 2011 | 9 PM screening, $5 – 10 suggested donation

Note: later starting time and different room.