“Handsworth Stories”: Birmingham Museum opens installation for the 40th anniversary of John Akomfrah’s legendary film

A documentary film that marked the history of British cinema is coming home: Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery will open the installation “Handsworth Stories” on October 13, marking the 40th anniversary of “Handsworth Songs”, director John Akomfrah’s documentary about the racial unrest of the 1980s, as Birmingham Museums Trust announced.

The installation explores the experiences, richness and diversity of the people of Handsworth — widely known as one of post-war Britain’s earliest and most important multicultural communities. Through a combination of documentary footage, archival materials, interviews and music, “Handsworth Songs” captures the testimonies of Handsworth residents and sheds light on the social, political and economic circumstances behind the riots of September–October 1985. The film’s score was composed by Trevor Mathison, co-founder of the Black Audio Film Collective together with Akomfrah; the photographs are by Vanley Burke, while the voices are those of Pervaiz Khan and Meera Syal.

The film, originally commissioned by Channel 4, was released to high critical acclaim and won several international awards, including the John Grierson Award for Best Documentary in 1986. Akomfrah, knighted in 2023 for services to the arts, created the film with the support of Birmingham artists and activists, including members of the Asian Youth Movement. Footage from the 1950s and 1960s provides an impressive counterpoint, documenting the arrival and development of Afro-Caribbean and South Asian communities in Birmingham and their hopes for a new life in Britain.

The installation also includes a selection of photographs from “Handsworth Self-Portrait”, the 1979 project by photographers Derek Bishton, John Reardon and Brian Homer, who invited passers-by to take photographs of themselves in front of a backdrop set up outside their office — an extraordinary mirror of one of Britain’s first multicultural communities. According to senior curator Ian Sergeant, “Handsworth Songs” is “an extraordinary work that speaks not only about the history of Handsworth and Birmingham, but also about much broader questions of migration, belonging, inequality, memory and identity”. Birmingham Museums Trust bought a copy of the film in 2022, bringing an important part of the city’s cultural history into its collection, and the installation is part of a city-wide program together with Birmingham City University and the University of Birmingham.