In its 2021 retrospective titled Films belong to those who need them – fragments from the history of Black British Cinema Sheffield Doc/Fest will spotlight and celebrate the history of Black British screen culture – a wide and diverse filmography that has been largely overlooked and undervalued in film discourse.
“We want to find connections between past and present, and to spark a conversation about how this filmography resonates with contemporary filmmakers and artists, and how it can inspire and inform the ways in which we conceive our own communities,” say festival organisers.
Doc/Fest has, for the first time, invited guest curators, “with a range of perspectives that will transcend the idea of a singular, complete narrative.” The guest curators come with a breadth of experience: as filmmakers, film programmers, broadcasters, photography curators, film students and historians.
“With such an abundant, complex and diverse filmography, which has a contested history of visibility and access, we felt it essential to present programmes curated by people who inhabit this history through their work, their existential pursuits, and their curiosity and care. We will present works by voices that could multiply, intersect, and together bring a rich spectrum of work,” continues the festi.al statement.
The festival further underlines that this will be the start of an o”ngoing series to be considered “a place for reframing history and building access.
The Retrospective Films belong to those who need them – fragments from the history of Black British Cinema will include work chosen by the following guest curators (see profiles below):
● Anthony Andrews & Teanne Andrews (We Are Parable)
● Campbell X (writer/filmmaker)
● David Olusoga (historian, broadcaster and filmmaker)
● George Amponsah (filmmaker)
● Judah Attille (filmmaker)
● Mark Sealy (curator and cultural historian
● a group of Film Studies / Screenwriting & Film students from Sheffield Hallam University as part of a partnership project led by Dr Chi-Yun Shin (Principal Lecturer in Film Studies).
This year, Sheffield Doc/Fest will deliver a hybrid festival, bringing audiences together for the Film and Arts Programmes in Sheffield and online. The International Industry programme for 2021, including the marketplace, pitches and panels, will take place online only.
Online Industry Passes are now available to filmmakers, artists, freelancers and members of the film, digital art and related communities from all over the world to engage with the artistic and industry programmes online.
The full festival rogramme will be announced on 11 May at which point individual tickets for the film programme, in Sheffield and online – including the Retrospective – will be available.
The festival presents the following programmes:
Film & Arts Programme
Films – Competitions and retrospective programmes from around the globe, giving multiple views on our times and on contemporary film.
Arts – A series of platforms for digital artworks, installations and performances, playing with non-fiction boundaries and expanding them.
Talks – A chance to hear from the talents, filmmakers and artists in the programme.
Industry Programme
Market – Marketplace and pitching opportunities.
Talks – Panels and debates discussing challenges and opportunities in the industry.
Talent – Training initiatives and workshops.
Community Programme
Engagement – Grassroots intercultural and intergenerational connections across the Doc/Fest programme.
Doc/Fest Exchange – A year-round platform for discussion, debate and discovery on the themes of climate justice and a healthy planet.
GUEST CURATOR PROFILES AND PROGRAMMES:
Anthony Andrews & Teanne Andrews (We Are Parable)
We Are Parable is an award winning film exhibition company founded by Anthony and Teanne Andrews in 2013. Since that time, they have focused on providing audiences around the UK with opportunities to respond to and experience Black Cinema in culturally relevant, memorable and unique ways.
We Are Parable’s programme Remember/Re-evaluate/Review will take titles from the 1970s which explore and identify how implicit racism has continued to fester in the British Media, some 40 years after these projects were first broadcast.
Campbell X
Campbell X is a writer/director who directed the award-winning queer urban romantic comedy feature film Stud Life. His film Stud Life was voted by the Guardian as one of the top 10 Black British feature films ever made. It was also in Vogue magazine as one of the best films to watch in 2020. Stud Life was also selected by the British Film Institute as one of the top 8 queer films to view while we were all on lockdown.
In Campbell X’s programme Destroy|Disturb|Disrupt – Decolonizing Queer Desire, Black queer filmmakers craft an intervention into desire for the Black queer body on film – a space denied to Black queer people as agents of our own longing and storytelling. These films show Black queer filmmakers creating our own language to disrupt our colonised historical framing by the white straight cisgender lens.
David Olusoga
David Olusoga is a British-Nigerian historian, broadcaster and film-maker. His most recent TV series include Black and British: A Forgotten History (BBC 2), The World’s War (BBC 2), A House Through Time (BBC 2) and the BAFTA winning Britain’s Forgotten Slave Owners (BBC 2). David is also the author of Black & British: A Forgotten History which was awarded both the Longman-History Today Trustees Award and the PEN Hessell-Tiltman Prize. His other books include The World’s War, which won First World War Book of the Year in 2015, and The Kaiser’s Holocaust: Germany’s Forgotten Genocide and the Colonial Roots of Nazism. David was also a contributor to the Oxford Companion to Black British History and writes for The Guardian, The Observer and BBC History Magazine.
George Amponsah
George Amponsah is a multiple award winning BAFTA nominated film maker who first started taking pictures in the 1980s as a photographer and Super 8mm film enthusiast. George’s most recent directing work is Black Power, a 90 minute film (TX March 2021) exec produced by Oscar winning director Steve McQueen for the BBC. Black Powerexamines how the British Black Power moment came into being in the late 1960s and fought against police brutality and racism. 2019 saw George working as director on Enslaved –an inspirational six-part documentary series (BBC2) hosted by Academy Award nominated actor Samuel L. Jackson that brings home the horror of slavery to the world through underwater archaeology.
Judah Attille
Judah Attille (she/her) is a TECHNE AHRC funded doctoral student at University of the Arts London. Her film Dreaming Rivers (1988) written and directed for Sankofa Film & Video and her current research into British black female performativity in avant-garde films has brought her into site-specific conversations with contemporary artists and filmmakers across several platforms. This proposal, Sonic Register: British black womxn and onscreen performativity, builds on discussions from Films in Dialogue LUX Moving Image (2019), Sankofa Whispers: Remembering, Reflecting and Reframing (2019), The Experimenta Debate, London Film Festival (2019) and the Brent Biennial podcast Yasmin Nicholas in Conversation (2021).
Judah Attille’s programme Sonic Register: British black women and onscreen performativity is a curated discussion of films animated by a three-way conversation between British womxn working in the arts. This conversation considers ‘performativity’ as an expanded function or ‘doing’ within and beyond the frame. The conversation takes a critical non-fiction approach to form a contemporary lens to look at canonical, heritage British films.
Mark Sealy
Mark Sealy, Executive Director of Autograph ABP (1991) and Principal Research Fellow: Decolonising Photography at University of the Arts London (University Arts London). Sealy is a core member of the Photography Archive Research Centre at London College of Communication.
In Mark Sealy’s programme SE24 – HD4 – SW3. Posting Codes the underlying principle of what constitutes home is what links films by Clovis Salmon (aka ‘Sam The Wheels’), Topher Campbell and Sandi Hudson-Frances together. They discuss ideas of place, space, migration, community, location and dislocation. Most importantly though as a body of films they remind us of how important it is to post the codes of our own stories.
