A lauded film about the life and work of cultural critic and New Left figurehead Stuart Hall will be shown in Leeds on 12 November thanks to a collaboration between the Leeds Taking Soundings group and Leeds International Film Festival.
The 90-minute documentary, called The Stuart Hall Project, has been described as a multifaceted portrait of the left intellectual, a tribute to his ideas, and a study of the emergence of the New Left. The work of director John Akomfrah, whose previous films include Handsworth Songs and The Nine Muses, it cuts documentary footage and archive interviews with the music of Miles Davis and voiceovers from Hall himself.
“Stuart Hall was kind of a rock star for us,” explained Akomfrah in a statement released with the film. “For many of my generation in the ’70s… he was one of the few people of colour we saw on television who wasn’t crooning, dancing or running. His very iconic presence on this most public of platforms suggested all manner of ‘impossible possibilities’.”
Akomfrah will be appearing at a 40-minute panel discussion following the Leeds screening which is at 20:30 on Tuesday 12 November at the Everyman cinema in the Trinity shopping mall in Leeds city centre. He will be joined on the panel by Max Farrar and Franco Bianchini (among others).
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Click here for more information and ticket booking.
Click here to watch Hall’s 2012 talk at the University of West Indies.
Click here for other screenings of the film.
Other forthcoming Leeds Taking Soundings events include Jeremy Seabrook on his new book Pauperland on 16 October, and Pragna Patel on fundamentalism and gender on 13 November. Click here for full details.
