For the last 30 years John Akomfrah has been committed to giving a voice and a presence to the legacy of the African Diaspora in Europe; to fill in the voids in history by digging into historical archives to create film essays and speculative fictional stories about past lives. His poetic and polyphonic films create sensual visual and audio experiences while developing a filmic language to understand the trauma and sense of alienation of displaced subjects; one that moves away from the rhetoric of resentment to propose new agents and perspectives.
Born in 1957, John Akomfrah lives and works in London. An artist, lecturer, and writer, as well as a filmmaker, his work is among the most distinctive in the contemporary British art world. Akomfrah is well known for his work with the London-based media workshop Black Audio Film Collective, which he co-founded in 1982, together with Lina Gopaul, Avril Johnson, Reece Auguiste, Trevor Mathison, David Lawson and Edward George. Since 1998, Akomfrah has work primarily within the independent film and television production companies, Smoking Dogs Films, (London) and Creation Rebel Films (Accra).
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Alongside Akomfrah’s successful career in cinema and television, his work has been widely shown in museums and galleries including Documenta 11, Kassel; the De Balie, Amsterdam; Centre Pompidou, Paris; the Serpentine Gallery and Whitechapel Art Gallery, London; and the Museum of Modern Art, New York. A major retrospective of Akomfrah’s gallery-based work with the Black Audio Film Collective premiered at FACT, Liverpool and Arnolfini, Bristol in 2007. His films have been included in international film festivals such as Cannes, Toronto and Sundance, among others. In 2008, he was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE). In March 2012, he was awarded the European Cultural Foundation’s Princess Margriet Award.