Sir John Akomfrah CBE

born 1957

The Unfinished Conversation 2012
© John Akomfrah / Smoking Dogs Films
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Biography

Sir John Akomfrah (born 4 May 1957) is a British artist, writer, film director, screenwriter, theorist and curator of Ghanaian descent, whose "commitment to a radicalism both of politics and of cinematic form finds expression in all his films".

A founder of the Black Audio Film Collective in 1982, he made his début as a director with Handsworth Songs (1986), which examined the fallout from the 1985 Handsworth riots. Handsworth Songs went on to win the Grierson Award for Best Documentary in 1987.

In the words of The Guardian, he "has secured a reputation as one of the UK’s most pioneering film-makers [whose] poetic works have grappled with race, identity and post-colonial attitudes for over three decades."

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Artworks

Film and audio

In the shop