Handsworth Songs + Short (Jali Film Weekender)
<div><b>Screening as part of the </b><font color="#0000ee"><b><u><a href="https://www.filmhouse.org.uk/jali-film-weekender">Jali Film Weekender 2026</a></u></b></font><b>.</b><b></b></div><div><b><br></b></div><div><b>This film screening will be preceded by the <a href="https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/lunchtime-talk-community-centred-cultural-spaces-in-a-climate-of-division-tickets-2001597049657?aff=oddtdtcreator">Lunchtime Talk: Community-centred cultural spaces in a climate of division</a> at Lochrin Rooftop Bar. Tickets sold separately.</b></div><div><br></div><div>Forty years since its release the Black Audio Film Collective’s <i>Handsworth Songs</i> feels poignant and viscerally relevant. In honour of its anniversary, we revisit John Akomfrah’s groundbreaking experimental documentary essay on race, protest and belonging in 80s Britain. </div><div><br></div><div>In October 1985 Britain witnessed a spate of civil disturbances in the Birmingham district of Handsworth and urban centres of London. These were violent, tragic events, marked by the death of an elderly black woman, Joy Gardner and a white policeman, Keith Blakelock. Handsworth Songs takes as its point of departure these events, and the inability of the British media to go beyond its concern with demonising or rationalising the rioters and their motives, to break the anxiety-driven loop of morbid responses to the presence of blacks in Britain.</div><div><br></div><div><i>Handsworth Songs</i> explores the idea that the riots represented less a self contained drama of rage with a single origin and trajectory than a multiplicity of issues, ambivalences, to do with race, longing and belonging – not all of which could be shored up by recourse to a rhetoric of civil disorder. The film’s sense of multiplicity extends to a rethinking of black British presence, and a refuting of the idea of a homogenous black community with a single sense of presence characterised by uniformity of ambition and expression.</div><div><br></div><div>The feature will be screened alongside short film:</div><div><br></div><div><b><i>Bermuda Riots Are Different </i></b>(dir. Alyson Thompson & Matt Mead, Bermuda/UK, 2026, 6 mins, English) (Scottish Premiere)</div><div><br></div><div><div>Bermuda, April 1968: Once again a White US college student is crowned queen of the annual floral pageant, hours later a race riot breaks out. The city burns. Across a decade of civil disturbances, encompassing assassinations and the last executions in the British Empire, <i>Bermuda Riots Are Different</i> re-evaluates this contested history with the archival voices of Black Bermudian eyewitnesses.</div></div>DocumentaryPT1H4MN/C 182026-10-30GBenPervaiz Khan
Meera Syal
Yvonne Weekes
John Akomfrah (<i>Handsworth Songs</i>); Alyson Thompson
Matt Mead (<i>Bermuda Riots Are Different</i>)
Lina Gopaul
Handsworth Songs + Short (Jali Film Weekender)"Handsworth Songs + Short (Jali Film Weekender)"Showtimes
October 30, 2:30 pm
Loading...