Artist Onyeka Igwe is launching her first book, ‘June Givanni: The Making of a Pan-African Cinema Archive’, published by Lawrence Wishart.
The book is a journey through the archive of curator and film programmer, June Givanni, a key figure in Pan-African and Black British cinema. Using original oral history research, Igwe uncovers the important role women festival organisers have played in Pan-African cinema history, conceptualising Givanni’s practice as a radical feminist counter archive. Igwe – one of the artists whose work featured in our ‘anywhere in the universe’ project across public libraries in 2023 – will be in conversation with film programmer Abiba Coulibaly.
Photo: Yasmin Akim
Onyeka Igwe is a London-born and based, moving image artist and researcher. Her work is aimed at the question: “how do we live together?”, not to provide a rigid answer as such, but to pull apart the nuances of mutuality, co-existence and multiplicity. Igwe’s practice figures sensorial, spatial and counter-hegemonic ways of knowing as central to that task.
Abiba Coulibaly is an independent film programmer with a background in critical geography, interested in exploring the intersection of ethics and aesthetics. She has previously worked as Programming Assistant at the BFI, is currently part of the programming team for Open City Documentary Festival and has facilitated the UK premiere of several radical and experimental documentaries from the African continent. She is the founder of Brixton Community Cinema and film cooperative Atlas Cinema, two ongoing experiments in what democratising access to cinema – as both a medium and space – could look like. In September 2024 she joined the Royal College of Art's School of Architecture as an Associate Lecturer, continuing to integrate her film practice with questions of spatial and civic equity.
Event Details
Thursday 29th May, 6-8pm
Tickets
Free, book in advance here
Access
This event takes place in the library and event space on the ground floor of 5 Florence Street.
The building has step free access and a lift.
Accessible toilets are available.
The nearest subway station is Bridge Street, a 14 minute walk away.
