Screenings

Menelik Shabazz (director of 'Burning An Illusion'), charts the rise of Lovers Rock, often dubbed romantic reggae, through a rich collage of live performances, archive footage and still photographs. The historical context and political significance of the music are given as much importance as the dance and the fashion trends the genre saw rise to.

Humorous and insightful comments by dub poet Linton Kwesi Johnson and comedians such as Angie Le Mar and Glenda Jackson provide the perfect backdrop to a film that's bound to rejuvenate interest into a music genre unjustly ignored by the mainstream media.

Motherland (Enat Hager) is the most powerful documentary on Africa. Fusing history, culture, politics, and contemporary issues, Motherland sweeps across Africa to tell a new story of a dynamic continent.

From the glory and majesty of Africa’s past through its complex and present history.

Motherland looks unflinchingly toward a positive Pan-African future. With breathtaking cinematography and a fluid soundtrack sculpted by Sona Jobarteh, Motherland is a beautiful illustration of global African diversity and unity.

From the acclaimed producers of the multi-award winning 500 Years Later, Motherland is Directed by Owen ‘Alik Shahadah and produced by M.K. Asante, Jr.

Black Panther Mumia Abu Jamal was locked up in Philapelphia for a crime he did not commit . Evidence was withheld, due process ignored and despite evidence to prove his innocence he has been inside for 29 years.

In this film Angela Davis, Alice Walker, Mos Def, Noam Chomsky, Snoop Dogg explain exactly why his situation is so unjust. Plus Q and A with filmmaker William Francome and Seeta James (international feminist icon, wife of CLR James . Philadelphia was the scene of the police aerial bombing of the MOVE 9 civil rights group in 1985.

Skin is one of the most moving stories to emerge from apartheid South Africa: Sandra Laing is a black child born in the 1950s to white Afrikaners, unaware of their black ancestry. Her parents are rural shopkeepers serving the local black community, who lovingly bring her up as their ‘white’ little girl. But at the age of ten, Sandra is driven out of white society.

The film follows Sandra’s thirty-year journey from rejection to acceptance, betrayal to reconciliation, as she struggles to define her place in a changing world - and triumphs against all odds.

Herman Wallace, Albert Woodfox and Robert King—the Angola 3—have spent a combined century in solitary confinement in Angola, the Louisiana State Penitentiary. Targeted by prison officials for being members of the Black Panther Party and for fighting against terrible prison conditions, they were convicted of the murder of a prison guard—with no physical evidence and no credible eyewitnesses. In the Land of the Free... presents their ongoing story as dramatic events continue to unfold. Narrated by Samuel L Jackson.

Filmed entirely on location in Jamaica the film is set against stunning rural backdrops of Port Antonio and Stony Hill, and built around a competition mutual appreication for music, movie explores the power of music and love to transcend cultural and religious barriers.

One Love is screenplay written by the late Trevor Rhone (The Harder They Come), and directed by Grammy award winner Don Letts (Westway to the World) and Rick Elgood (Dancehal Queen). Based on an original piece by film producer Yvonne Deutschmann in collaboration with producers Sheelagh Farrell, and Bjorn Eivind Aarskog (Shortcut).

The film was funded by the UK Film Council as part of the New Cinema Fund and is distributed by Blue Dolphin Films.

Featuring: Vaz Blackwood of 'Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels' fame, as Scarface and The Wire's (BBC) Idris Elba (Stringer) who plays Aaron: Serena's fiance.

This screening is sponsored by MPC (Moving Picture Company) in association with Gabriel Media International and Blue Dolphin Films with the support of Adinkra Films. It is a tribute to the late Trevor Rhone.

The BBC has tranformed Andrea Levys award winning book into a fantastic two part series. Each part is 90 minutes long. Part 1 will be screened at 11.30am with part 2 at 2.30pm. Bring the kids/nieces/nephews and make a day of it. Visit the amazing War to Windrush exhibit over lunch. The exhibition is the only one to detail the African Caribbean war effort and took 60 years of lobbying before it was realised.

Throughout September the BFI will celebrate the fact that it's 20 years since the release of Spike Lee's seminal film Do The Right Thing. The season will include Do The Right Thing; Boyz in the Hood; Juice; She's Gotta Have It and Malcolm X. They'll also be screenings of classic films including Sweet Sweetback's Baadassss Song; Killer of Sheep; Taxi Driver, Juice and Night of the Hunter.

With speakers, performers, special shows, workshops and lots of extra events to enjoy, there are many opportunities. At the heart of the festival are some new dramas, documentaries, docudramas and short films - your films, your voices.

Black Womyn Covnersations and U People were screened at the 2008 bfm Film Festival, don't miss the chance to catch these titles again at the London Lesbian and Gay Film Festival on 4 and 5 April, 2009.

U People is an "accidental" documentary made by Hanifah Walidah and Olive Demetrius about the cast and crew on location at a music video shoot in Brooklyn. All the participants are women or trans people of colour and are mainly lesbian identified.

While the group wait for their scenes, conversations are captured on camera about what it is to be a woman of colour, what happens when you are read as a black male and what it means to face multiple oppressions. Screening alongside, Rachel Wamoto interviews British born lesbians of African and West Indian descent and those who have come to Britain in order to be out in her short film Kuchu Story.

Truce is called on a brutal civil conflict. The two sides agree to a feast. Can they put the past behind them? Fanta Régina Nacro's award-winning directorial debut reveals the darkness that falls when war is waged.

1946 after black people had fought and died all over the world for Britain those still in England were told to go back where they had come from. As a black person in the post-war years you were: refused bank loans; refused jobs; restricted to live in bombed out areas; blocked from buying homes; harassed by police; refused entry to churches; refused service in pubs, hotels, restaurants; forced to pay a higher mortgage than whites; spat at on public transport; attacked by the general public treated as if stupid in schools.

King Leopold II of Belgium in the early 20th century turned the Congo into a vast rubber-harvesting labour camp in which he killed millions and amputated the hands of tens of thousands while claiming he was civilising the African.

Although represented in the west as typical "african savagery" the chopping off of hands was promoted by white people as a means of terrorising Africans to collect rubber in order to make Europeans rich.

This is why  one of the world's richest countries is home to such misery today. This award winning documentary sets the context for understanding   the crisis in Kivu, the 5 milllion Congolese deaths in the  last ten years and why Patrice Lumumba was assassinated by Western governments. The Congo was also crucial to the winning of World War 2.