John Akomfrah – Handsworth Songs (1986)

Quote:
The Black Audio Film Collective’s acclaimed essay film, ‘Handsworth Songs’, examines the 1985 race riots in Handsworth and London. Interweaving archival photographs, newsreel clips, and home movie footage, the film is both an exploration of documentary aesthetics and a broad meditation social and cultural oppression through Britain’s intertwined narratives of racism and economic decline.

Quote:
“[Handsworth Songs is] The Black Audio Film Collective’s documentary-essay on the civil disobedience that erupted in reaction to the repressive policing of black communities in London and Birmingham in 1985. On the one hand, the film received critical acclaim and won many prizes, including the prestigious Grierson Award from the British Film Institute. On the other, one review in a black community newspaper—The Voice—received the film with the dismissive remarks, “Oh no, not another riot documentary,” and in the national daily The Guardian the film was subject to a fierce intellectual polemic from novelist Salman Rushdie. Whereas the filmmakers conceived their experimental approach to the documentary genre as a strategy ‘to find a structure and a form which would allow us the space to deconstruct the hegemonic voices of British television newsreels,’ (Reece Auguiste, 1988:6) Rushdie argued that, on the contrary, ‘the trouble is, we aren’t told the other stories. What we get is what we know from TV. Blacks as trouble; blacks as victims’ (ICA, 1988:16)” (Kobena Mercer Welcome to the Jungle 70).

Handsworth Songs (John Akomfrah 1986) 576p.mkv

General
Container:  	Matroska
Runtime: 	1 h 0 min
Size: 	964 MiB
Video
Codec: 	x264
Resolution: 	768x576 
Aspect ratio:  	4:3
Frame rate: 	25.000 fps
Bit rate: 	1 950 kb/s
BPP: 	0.176
Audio
#1:  	English 2.0ch AC-3 @ 256 kb/s

https://nitro.download/view/46EA5DC9C3C39F0/Handsworth_Songs_(John_Akomfrah_1986)_576p.mkv

Language(s):English
Subtitles:None