Harstad Kino, Screen 2

Inaugurated in 1982 and dissolved in 1998, the seven-person Black Audio Film Collective (BAFC) is widely acknowledged as one of the most influential artist groups to emerge from Britain in recent years.

John Akomfrah, Lina Gopaul, Avril Johnson, Reece Auguiste, Trevor Mathison, David Lawson and Edward George produced award winning film, photography, slide tape, video, installation, posters and interventions, much of which has never been exhibited in Britain.

We are very proud to have Trevor Mathison visiting AMIFF 2024. Mathison and Gary Stewart, who makes up Dubmorphology, are behind the comissioned work for AMIFF 2024 Our Time is Now. Mathison and Stewart will be in conversation with curator and artist Abirami Logendran after the screening.

Produced while the Black Audio Film Collective were undergraduates, Expeditions 1 – Signs of Empire is the first of a two-part 35mm slide-tape text. Expeditions; part two is entitled Images of Nationality. The work toured England from November 1984 to March 1985, using a Kodak dissolve unit to sequence images into narrative. The soundtrack to Signs of Empire, which consisted of tape loops of musique concrete and political speeches, was amplified to create a powerful environment of dread.

Signs of Empire (1983) introduced the now characteristic ‘film essay’ style — a montage of imagery from still photographs, staged dramatisations, filmed and archival footage, with a soundtrack of recorded speeches in lieu of a more traditional documentary narrator.

More about The Black Audio Film Collective:

Their first film Handsworth Songs won seven international awards in 1987; their second film Testament premiered at the Semaine de la Critique at Cannes International Film Festival in 1988; these and subsequent works such as Twilight City (1989) and The Last Angel of History (1995) staked a claim for a new kind of moving image work that was resolutely experimental and confidently internationalist.

Throughout their career, the BAFC worked within and between the media of art, film and television, participating in British survey exhibitions such as From Two Worlds (Whitechapel Gallery, 1986), The British Art Show (Hayward Gallery, 1990) as well as international exhibitions such as Documenta X (1997) and Documenta XI (2002).

Characterised by an interest in memory, history and aesthetics„ the collective created a series of defiantly experimental works that engaged with black popular and political culture in Britain. The group were also instrumental in bringing an awareness of avant-garde film from Africa, India and South America to the UK.

Year: 1983

Single channel 35mm colour Ektachrome transferred to video, sound

26 minutes

Director: John Akomfrah

Producer: Lina Gopaul

Sound: Trevor Mathison