Saturday 15 April, 6.30pm
Hyènes [Hyenas]. Dir. Djibril Diop Mambéty
Senegal, France, Switzerland, UK, Netherlands, Italy. 1992.
Introduced by Wasis Diop, Kaoru Egushi and June Givanni
Book your free ticket here.

Saturday 22 April, 6.30pm
What My Mother Told Me. Dir. Frances-Anne Solomon. UK, Trinidad. 1995.
Introduced by Frances-Anne Solomon (Zoom)
Book your free ticket here.

Saturday 29 April, 6.30pm
Vula N’Kuvute [Tug of War]. Dir. Amil Shivji. Tanzania, South Africa, Germany, Qatar. 2021.
Introduced by Dr Ida Hadjivayanis
Book your free ticket here.

Saturday 6 May, 6.30pm
Buud Yam. Dir. Gaston Kaboré. Burkina Faso. 1997.
Introduced by Gaston Kaboré
Book your free ticket here.

Saturday 13 May, 6.30pm
Sambizanga. Dir. Sarah Maldoror. Angola, France. 1972.
Introduced by Professor Lindiwe Dovey
Book your free ticket here.

Saturday 20 May, 6.30pm
Camp de Thiaroye [The Camp at Thiaroye]. Dir. Ousmane Sembène and Thierno Faty Sow. Senegal, Algeria, Tunisia. 1988.
Introduced by actor Sidiki Bakaba
Book your free ticket here.

Saturday 27 May, 6.30pm
La vieille quimboiseuse et le majordome [The Old Sorceress and the Valet]. Dir. Julius-Amédée Laou. France. 1987.
Introduced by Julius-Amédée Laou
Book your free ticket here.

Saturday 3 June, 6.30pm
La femme au couteau [The Woman with the Knife]. Dir. Timité Bassori. Ivory Coast. 1969.
Selbé et tant d’autres [Selbé: One Among Many]. Dir. Safi Faye. Senegal. 1983.
Introduction to both films by critic and distributor Claire Diao
Book your free ticket here.

Films documenting the Pan-African Film and Television Festival of Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso.

Fespaco ’87. Dir. Carolyn Sides. Jamaica, USA (1987). 57 mins

FESPACO – the Pan-African Film and Television Festival of Ouagadougou, in Burkina Faso – is a biennial festival founded in 1969. Fespaco ‘87 covers the events of the 10th edition of the festival, and marks the year that the festival expanded to include diaspora filmmakers in the competition.

Dix milles ans de cinéma [10,000 Years of Cinema]. Dir. Balufu Bakupa-Kanyinda. Democratic Republic of Congo (1991). 13 mins

Reflections on the enduring and essential nature of cinema by filmmakers including Djibril Diop Mambéty, Moussa Sene Absa, Idrissa Ouedraogo, Mansour Sora Wade, Felix de Rooy and Reece Auguiste, during the 12th edition of FESPACO in 1991.

Ouaga, capitale du cinéma. Dir. Mohamed Challouf. Tunisia (2000). 60 mins

Ouagadougou is the capital of Burkina Faso, the city that hosts FESPACO. As the ‘capital of cinema’ during the 1980s. ‘Ouaga’ was the setting for passionate political and cinematic ideas. Supported by the young revolutionary president Thomas Sankara, the festival became a symbol for cultural renaissance across an entire African continent. This film looks at the period and the impact of Sankara’s assassination in 1987.

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Films available to watch anytime from 15 April to 4 June 2023
Wednesday to Sunday, 11am–6pm
Raven Row Gallery (London)

Documentaries and short films by and about Black women

Please note the films have different screening dates.

Hair Piece: A Film for Nappyheaded People

Dir. Ayoka Chenzira. USA, 1984. 10 mins.

Available to watch from 15 April to 4 June

An animated satire on the question of self image for African American women living in a society where beautiful hair is viewed as hair that blows in the wind and lets you be free.

Words in Action: Toni Cade Bambara interviewed by June Givanni (excerpt)

Dir. and produced by Pictures of Women for Channel 4. UK, 1985. 17 mins.

Available to watch from 15 April to 4 June

Identifiable Qualities: Toni Morrison interviewed by Margaret Busby (excerpt)

Dir. and produced by Sindamani Bridglal. UK, USA, 1988. 26 mins.

Available to watch from 15 April to 4 June

An interview with Nobel Prize-winning novelist Toni Morrison, one of the most heralded authors in American literature, illuminates her use of personal experience as an African-American woman to create vivid female characters.

Omega Rising: Women of Rastafari

Dir. D Elmina Davis. UK, 1988. 52 mins.

Available to watch from 15 April to 7 May AND from 24 May to 4 June

This groundbreaking documentary was the first film to explore and challenge myths and stereotypes about the Rastafarian movement, giving voice to the women of Rastafari, who speak for themselves about their relationship to the movement and its development.

Twilight City

Black Audio Film Collective for Channel 4. UK, 1989. 52 mins.

Available to watch from 10 May to 21 May

A fictional letter from a daughter, Olivia, to her mother in Dominica is the narrative thread connecting interviews from (predominantly) black and Asian cultural critics, historians and journalists.

Black on Europe was a landmark BBC television series produced to signal the establishment of the European single market on 1 January 1993. In 1991, Black British filmmakers Colin Prescod and Onyekachi Wambu documented the lived experiences of Black people and communities living within the EU across six countries: the Netherlands, France, Germany, Italy, Portugal and the UK. We have the pleasure to screen all episodes as part of our exhibition’s programme.

Series Producer: Onyekachi Wambu
Series Editor: Colin Prescod
1991
UK
Black on Europe: Germany
Black on Europe: Portugal
Black on Europe: Holland
Black on Europe: France
Black on Europe: Italy
Black on Europe: Great Britain

Films available to watch anytime from 26 April to 21 May 2023
Wednesday to Sunday, 11am–6pm
Raven Row Gallery (London)

Black British films from the 1960s–80s.

Four seminal films that offer a glimpse of the diverse film styles, which later find expression within Black British independent cinema.

15 April – 7 May 2023
Wednesday to Sunday, 11am–6pm
Raven Row (London)

Death May Be Your Santa Claus
Dir. Frankie Dymon Jr. UK, 1969. 37 mins
Musician Frankie Dymon Jr was a member of the British wing of the Black Panthers. He made Death May Be Your Santa Claus, which follows a young Black militant on a psychological journey about race and colonialism, in response to racist extremism in the UK and the National Front.

Rasta in-a Babylon
Dir. Howard Johnson. UK, 1978. 40 mins
Howard Johnson, who later directed and produced films about music and politics for Channel 4 and other broadcasters, made Rasta in-a Babylon while at the UK’s National Film School. Filmed in and around London, the film looks at the emerging influence of the Rastafari movement in Britain. It features the Twelve Tribes of Israel and musicians, including Ijahman Levi.

Riots and Rumours of Riots
Dir. Imruh Bakari. UK, 1981. 32 mins
Made in the midst of the 1981 uprisings in cities around the UK while the director Imruh Bakari was at the UK’s National Film School. The film explores the origins of radical Black politics in the UK, charting the experiences of the preceding generation, including of the 1958 Notting Hill and Nottingham riots, and foregrounds the role played by that generation of Caribbean migrants in British history, particularly during the war. Bakari was a founding member of Ceddo Film and Video Workshop in 1982.

Big George Is Dead
Dir. Henry Martin. UK, 1987. 65 mins
Big George Is Dead, written by Michael Abbensetts, was produced for Channel 4 by Kuumba Productions, which was set up by Henry Martin, Imruh Bakari and Menelik Shabazz in 1982. The television drama casts Norman Beaton and Rudolph Walker as old friends who reconnect after a funeral and explore the changing face of London during an all-night Soho bender.

Films recalling Afro-diasporic experiences in Brazil and Cuba, and struggles in Portuguese-speaking Africa.

Films available to watch from 10 May to 4 June 2023

Ôrí. Dir. Raquel Gerber. Brazil. 1989.
While giving an overall look at the documented history of black movements in Brazil (during the 70s and 80s), ORI tells the story of a woman, Beatriz Nascimento, activist and historian, who searches for her identity through research into the history of the “QUILOMBOS” as warrior establishments and focuses of cultural resistance, from 15th-century Africa to Brazil in the 20th century.

Rostov-Luanda. Dir. Abderrahmane Sissako. Angola, France, Germany, Mali,
Mauritania. 1997.
Abderrahmane Sissako left Mauritania in 1980 for Rostov-on-Don in Russia to study film making. There he befriended Baribanga, an Angolan freedom fighter. Two decades later, Sissako searches for his old friend and the promise of African liberation.

Cuba, an African Odyssey. Dir. Jihan El-Tahri. Egypt, South Africa, France. 2007.
From Che Guevara’s military campaign to avenge Lumumba in the Congo up to the fall of apartheid in South Africa, 300,000 Cubans fought alongside African revolutionaries. Cuba: An African Odyssey is the previously untold story of Cuba’s support for various African revolutions, one of the Cold War’s most vigorous contests over resources and ideology.

Independência [Independence]. Dir. Fradique (Mário Bastos). Angola. 2015.
Independence documents the memories of the colonial situation in Angola, reveals the first steps in the struggle and covers the main settings where it took place. From 1961 to 1974, the war in Angola spread from the bush areas in the North and Cabinda to the flood plains in the East.

Expeditions 1 – Signs of Empire
Black Audio Film Collective
UK, 1983

Expeditions 2 – Images of Nationality
Black Audio Film Collective
UK, 1984

John Akomfrah was a founding member of the influential Black Audio Film Collective, which started in London in 1982 alongside the artists David Lawson and Lina Gopaul, with whom he continues to collaborate with today. Together these two films served as an inauguration of some of the keys themes of their work: race, ethnicity, colonialism, identity, diaspora and history.

Available to watch anytime from 15 April to 4 June 2023
Wednesday to Sunday, 11am–6pm
Raven Row (London)

Ava and Gabriel – Un historia di amor [Ava and Gabriel: A Love Story]
Dir. Felix de Rooy
Curaçao, Netherlands, France. 1990.
Set in Curacao in the 1940s, Ava & Gabriel: A Love Story tells of the painter Gabriel Goedbloed, who arrives from Holland to paint a mural of the Virgin Mary in a local church. Gabriel is black, originally from Surinam. The colonial Antillian society proves less than tolerant towards him, especially after he chooses as his model a young Black teacher, Ava.
Available to watch from 15 April to 30 April

Aimé Césaire: A Voice For History
Part II: Where the Edges of Conquest Meet
Dir. Euzhan Palcy
Martinique, France, Senegal. 1994.
Euzhan Palcy pays tribute to her mentor, great civil rights activist and Négritude movement co-founder Aimé Césaire, in this three-part bio-documentary. Part II moves to Paris in the 1930s where Césaire, Leopold Senghor (first President of Senegal) and the French-Guyanese poet, Léon Damas, developed the concept of negritude, a world-wide revindication of African values.
Available to watch from 3 May to 14 May

Lumumba, la mort du prophète [Lumumba: Death of a Prophet]
Dir. Raoul Peck.
France, Germany, Switzerland. 1990.
A groundbreaking, personal analysis of the way politicians and the Western media manipulated the public image of Congolese Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba, who was murdered in 1961. Lumumba was one of the most charismatic and controversial figures of the African struggle for independence in the 1960s. Filmmaker Raoul Peck, who grew up in Congo as the privileged son of an agricultural expert from Haiti, investigates why Lumumba failed to achieve his aims.
Available to watch from 17 May to 4 June