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Graduate Lecture Series: John Akomfrah - The Burden of MnemosynePost an Event »

San Francisco Art Institute (Main Campus)

April 23 - April 23, 2010

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800 Chestnut Street San Francisco, CA 94133
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A founding figure in Black British cinema, John Akomfrah is an artist, writer, critic, and filmmaker. Internationally recognized for his long-time tenure with the London-based media workshop Black Audio Film Collective (of which he was one of the founders in 1982), he formalized his focus on issues of Black British identity by developing an array of media adequate for and relevant to the representation of that identity. He made his directorial debut with the seminal, prize-winning Handsworth Songs (1986), a film that began a career-long artistic odyssey in the reconfiguration of documentary conventions for contemporary Black British experience. Other works include Testament (1988), about an African politician remanded to exile after a coup d’etat; Who Needs a Heart? (1991) and Seven Songs for Malcolm X (1993), both concerning the advent of Black power in Britain; and Speak like a Child (1998), a psychological drama. Akomfrah is a former governor of the British Film Institute. Lecture held at the San Francisco Art Institute's lecture hall located at the 800 Chestnut Street campus.