PerAnkh – The June Givanni PanAfrican Cinema Archive

This exhibition explores ideas about Pan-African cinema, particularly in the context of Black British cinema and culture. It does so through the knowledge and experience embedded in the June Givanni PanAfrican Cinema Archive (JGPACA), an extensive personal archive amassed by film curator and programmer June Givanni. 

Items from the JGPACA’s expansive collection are on display in the adjacent gallery. On the first floor, visitors can spend time with some of the Archive’s literature on Pan-African film and Black British culture, and listen to recordings in its audio collection, which include interviews made by Givanni with significant filmmakers, actors and theorists. 

Thematic programmes of feature films, shorts and documentaries from Africa and the African diaspora rotate over the course of the show. While weekly screenings of feature films by celebrated filmmakers including Safi Faye, Gaston Kabore?, Sarah Maldoror and Ousmane Sembe?ne take place on Saturday evenings, and a programme of intergenerational panel discussions expands on the exhibition’s themes. An installation of the earliest audio-visual works by the Black Audio Film Collective, Expeditions 1 – Signs of Empire and Expeditions 2 – Images of Nationality (1983–84), can also be seen on the first floor. Chimurenga – a collective of artists and researchers based in Cape Town, South Africa – are making a work that charts the development of the JGPACA, while artist Zineb Sedira has designed a poster for the exhibition.