Accessing Handsworth Songs

Film: Handsworth Songs

Duration: 180 mins

Director: John Akomfrah

Year of Release: 1986

Midlands Art Centre are delighted to host this special event which documents the journey to make Black Audio Film Collective’s 1986 film more – and differently – accessible.

Made for Channel 4 series Britain: The Lie Of The Land by multimedia group Black Audio Film Collective, acclaimed essay film Handsworth Songs was released just one year after the riots in Handsworth, Birmingham and Tottenham. Interweaving archival photographs, newsreel clips and home movie footage, John Akomfrah’s award-winning film takes as its point of departure these violent events and the inability of the British media to go beyond its concern with demonising the rioters and their motives.

slow emergency siren, ongoing: Accessing Handsworth Songs developed as a year-long collaboration, co-led by LUX and Sarah Hayden, as part of a research project called Voices in the Gallery.

Elaine Lillian Joseph was commissioned to write and perform augmented audio description for the film and invited the Care-fuffle Working Group to develop creative captions. Audio-description and caption-users advised on the translations of sounds and images as they evolved.

Hannah Kemp-Welch worked with the project participants over a year to make [voices surface]: an audio-documentary about Accessing Handsworth Songs. This audio documentary, captioned by Care-fuffle Working Group, will also be launched at this event at MAC.

slowemergencysiren.org.uk

Schedule

12.30pm: Intro

12.45pm: Handsworth Songs screening
(audio described + captioned)

1.45pm: Q&A/panel with audio describer Elaine Lillian Joseph, sound artist Hannah Kemp-Welch, academic Sarah Hayden and head of LUX Ben Cook
(captioned + BSL interpreted)

2.30pm: Interval

3pm: Hannah Kemp-Welch’s [voices surface]: an audio documentary about
Accessing Handsworth Songs
(captioned)