Black Audio Film Collective

Black Audio Film Collective was active between 1983 and 1998, producing videos, films and installations. It was the principal manifestation—as well as the most radical, complex and controversial—of black cinema in the United Kingdom. The BAFC’s best-known work is Handsworth Songs about the 1985 riots, which documents the prolonged repression and suppression of black people in British society. The session includes a film about the BAFC and its poetic, critical essay film, which, under Marker’s influence, determined a political and aesthetic reaction in British cinema in the mid-1980s: Territories, in which Isaac Julien documents media portrayal of black people and presents Notting Hill Carnival as an act of resistance. After being overlooked for a period, the works of the BAFC have been recovered by various exhibitions and cycles in recent years. [Video screening]

Territories, Isaac Julien, 1984, 21 min.; Handsworth Songs, Black Audio Film Collective, 1986, 58 min.