Screen WM

A poetic essay on the themes of memory and migration. Part of Made in England, a partnership initiative developed by Arts Council England and BBC English Regions.

Mnemosyne refers to the mother of the nine Muses, the personification of memory in Greek Mythology.  The belief was that those souls who chose to drink from the river of Mnemosyne, rather than from Lethe, would remember everything and attain omniscience.   Akomfrah’s work questions memory and suggests the possibility for endless re-interpretation of historical events by interweaving archival footage from 1960-1981, with contemporary ‘portraits’ of Birmingham and extracts of new work filmed in a remote snowy landscape.

Often referred to as ‘filmed essay’, Akomfrah’s work involves the creation of quasi-fictional scenarios, a questioning of the evidence that we find in archival material.  For Mnemosyne, he used the BBC archives as a starting point to explore attitudes, assumptions and understandings about life in the West Midlands during a key moment in Britain’s immigrant history.  Material has also been drawn from MACE (Media Archive for Central England) and Birmingham Central Library; joining up archives in this way is one of the pioneering aspects of the project.

Snatches of Homer’s Ilyiad, with its themes of journeying, alienation and reconciliation and memory, are narrated in voiceover through the nine ‘chapters’ of the film, each section named for one of the Muses. 

Akomfrah is best known for his work with the London-based media workshop Black Audio Film Collective, which he co-founded in 1982 with the objectives of addressing issues of Black British identity. In 1986 his film Handsworth Songs won seven international prizes, including the prestigious John Grierson Award.  In February 2007, a full retrospective of Akomfrah’s work with the Black Audio Film Collective ran at Foundation for Creative Technologies in Liverpool, to great critical acclaim.

John Akomfrah. Born 1957 Accra, Ghana. Lives and works in London, UK.

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