Handsworth Songs

The film takes up the events of 1985. They happened in Handsworth and in London. There had been clashes in the streets. The film tells them through news footage. Archive photographs come in between. Pieces of home movies are used as well. The account does not follow a straight chronology. Voices are laid over the images. The question of migration and settlement is traced backwards. Racism and economic decline are set side by side. The film also puts the form of documentary in question. The work belongs to the Black Audio Film Collective. John Akomfrah directed the sixty one minute film, in which Meera Syal appears. The British production was finished in 1986.