BLACK FILM BRITISH CINEMA CONFERENCE 2017
The Politics of Race in Contemporary Film and Digital Practice
Thursday 18 May to Friday 19 May 2017
Goldsmiths, University of London (Day One) and Institute of Contemporary Arts (Day Two)
KEYNOTE SPEAKERS:
- Professor Sarita Malik Brunel University
- Kara Keeling University of Southern California
Alongside keynotes from Professor Sarita Malik and Dr Kara Keeling and a fantastic range of papers offering international perspectives on both historic and contemporary approaches to to black British cinema, we are pleased to announce a number of plenaries and special presentations throughout the two days:
The plenary Institutional Approaches to Black Film Support addresses the complex questions of diversity within the institutions, and discusses the various methods in which film institutions and funders have and continue to supported black filmmaking in the UK, and how these methods can inform current strategies by the DCMS, BFI, Film London and others, with panelists Ruth Caleb OBE, Chi Onwurah MP, Gill Henderson and Matimba Kabalika
In our second plenary Remembering Black Film British Cinema 1988, Professor Sylvia Harvey (University of Leeds) Eddie George (Founding member of Black Audio Film Collective) and Dr Rod Stoneman will be offering a retrospective analysis of the first conference, its socio-political context, and what those times meant not just for filmmakers but also the institutions involved.
Day two at the Institute of Contemporary Arts opens with the film curator June Givanni in conversation with Dr Emma Sandon (Birkbeck, University of London) discussing her career, the significance of the Black Film British Cinema Conference in 1988 and her archival work and research with the Pan African Cinema Archives. This will be followed by a special visual panel on the films of Steve McQueen. Curated by Dr Richard Martin (King's College London) this session will critique the forms of representation of race found in both McQueen's early video work and his feature films. Finally, moving image artists Larry Achiampong and David Blandy and documentary filmmakers Cassie Quarless and Usayd Younis will participate in a shared visual plenary demonstrating and discussing how two different aesthetic approaches - the art film and the radical documentary - address the central question of how the moving image creates counter-hegemonic narratives of blackness and diversity.