Handsworth Songs

This seminal documentary explores the civil disturbances in the district of Handsworth in Birmingham and in London in 1985. Running throughout the film is the idea that the riots were the outcome of a protracted suppression by British society of black presence. On its release in 1986, Handsworth Songs not only stoked controversy, it also heralded, in John Akomfrah, the arrival of a brilliant and provocative new voice in British filmmaking.