The Black Audio Film Collective (BAFC), founded in 1982 and active until 1998, comprised seven

Black British Black British people are a multi-ethnic group of British citizens of either African or Afro-Caribbean descent.Gadsby, Meredith (2006), ''Sucking Salt: Caribbean Women Writers, Migration, and Survival'', University of Missouri Press, pp. 76–7 ...

and diaspora

multimedia artist Multimedia is a form of communication that uses a combination of different content forms such as text, audio, images, animations, or video into a single interactive presentation, in contrast to traditio ...

s and film makers: John Akomfrah, Lina Gopaul, Avril Johnson, Reece Auguiste, Trevor Mathison, Edward George and Claire Joseph. Joseph left in 1985 and was replaced by David Lawson. The group initially came together as students at

Portsmouth Polytechnic , mottoeng = Let us follow the Light , established = 1870 (Portsmouth and Gosport School of Science and Art) , type = Public , budget = £282.5 million (2020/21) , chancellor ...

(their backgrounds included sociology, fine art and psychology), and after graduation relocated to Hackney in

east London East or Orient is one of the four cardinal directions or points of the compass. It is the opposite direction from west and is the direction from which the Sun rises on the Earth. Etymology As in other languages, the word is formed from the f ...

Background

The formation of the Black Audio Film Collective, like that of Sankofa Film and Video Collective, was a response to the social unrest in Britain in the 1980s: "Influenced by contemporary debate on post-colonialism and social theorists such as Homi Bhabha and Stuart Hall, both groups centered around investigations of black identity/culture within the British experience and reworked the documentary to articulate new voices in British cinema."

Style

The BAFC's output has been variously described as "an extraordinary body of poetic, allusive, and intensely personal films, videos, and 'slide-tape texts' that chronicled England’s multicultural past and present and pushed the boundaries of the documentary form", and as "the expression of a generation of diasporic subjects that seized the idea of 'blackness' as an identity marker as well as a claim to political visibility." The pioneering films they produced are still considered influential. According to ''

Guardian Guardian usually refers to: * Legal guardian, a person with the authority and duty to care for the interests of another * ''The Guardian'', a British daily newspaper (The) Guardian(s) may also refer to: Places * Guardian, West Virginia, Unite ...

'' critic

Adrian Searle Adrian Searle (born 1953 in Welwyn Garden City, Hertfordshire) is the chief art critic of ''The Guardian'' newspaper in Britain, and has been writing for the paper since 1996. Previously he was a painter. Life and career Searle studied at the St ...

, "the works the BAFC made during the 80s and early 1990s are almost shocking in their range.... The collective was heavily informed by film and psychoanalytic theory, by political discussion and debate.... Perhaps the most significant achievement of the group was the formulation of a poetic, a tone of voice, a particular kind of filmic space that resisted categorisation."Adrian Searle
"Voices of the rising tide"
''The Guardian'', 27 February 2007. In the words of

Kodwo Eshun Kodwo Eshun (born 1967) is a British -Ghanaian writer, theorist and filmmaker. He is perhaps best known for his 1998 book ''More Brilliant than the Sun: Adventures in Sonic Fiction'' and his association with the art collective The Otolith Grou ...

, they "projected a stance of high seriousness with seductive stylishness". BAFC produced what the

British Film Institute The British Film Institute (BFI) is a film and television charitable organisation which promotes and preserves film-making and television in the United Kingdom. The BFI uses funds provided by the National Lottery to encourage film production, ...

identifies as "some of the most challenging and experimental documentaries in Britain in the 1980s".Paul Ward
"Black Audio Film Collective (1982-98)"
BFScreenonline. Notable among their oeuvre is 1986's '' Handsworth Songs'', a

film essay An essay is, generally, a piece of writing that gives the author's own argument, but the definition is vague, overlapping with those of a letter, a paper, an article, a pamphlet, and a short story. Essays have been sub-classified as formal ...

that makes unconventional use of newsreel and archive material of the autumn 1985 civil disturbances in Birmingham and London to explore memories of immigration and the different ways in which race was experienced and British society dealt with the black presence. Kodwo Eshun, writing in 2004, referred to the reputation of ''Handsworth Songs'' "as the most important and influential art film to emerge from England in the last twenty years." The collective was dissolved in 1998, after which John Akomfrah, Lina Gopaul and David Lawson went on to found Smoking Dogs Films. The first major retrospective of the BAFC, entitled ''The Ghosts of Songs'', toured between 2 February and 1 April 2007.

Selected filmography

* ''Expeditions: Signs of Empire''."Signs of Empire"
on YouTube. * ''Images of Nationality'' (1983–84) * '' Handsworth Songs'' (1986) * ''Testament'' (1988) * ''Twilight City'' (1989) * ''Mysteries of July'' (1991) * ''Who Needs a Heart'' (1991) * ''A Touch of the Tar Brush'' (1992) * ''

Seven Songs for Malcolm X ''Seven Songs for Malcolm X'' is a British documentary film about the life of Malcolm X, the influential civil rights activist who was assassinated in 1965. The film was written and directed by John Akomfrah, with co-writer Edward George, and ...

'' (1993) * ''The Mothership Connection'' (1995) * ''

The Last Angel of History ''The Last Angel of History'' is a 45-minute documentary, directed in 1996 by John Akomfrah and written and researched by Edward George of the Black Audio Film Collective, that deals with concepts of Afrofuturism as a metaphor for the displacemen ...

'' (1995) * ''3 Songs of Pain, Light and Time'' (1995) * ''Memory Room 451'' (1997) * ''Martin Luther King: Days of Hope'' (1997) * ''Gangsta Gangsta: The Tragedy of Tupac Shakur'' (1998)

References

External links

"Voices of the rising tide"
''The Guardian'', 27 February 2007.
John Akomfrah on Black Audio Film Collective
YouTube video.
"Black Audio Film Collective (gb)"
at IMDb.
"Black Audio Film Collective Online"
FACT (Foundation for Art and Creative Technology).
"Sounds in Diaspora. The Cinema of the Black Audio Film Collective"
Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía. {{Authority control 1982 establishments in the United Kingdom Black British artists Black British cinema Black British culture in England Black British history English artist groups and collectives Film collectives Organizations disestablished in 1998 Organizations established in 1982

Background

Style

Selected filmography

See also

References

Further reading

External links