I Would Have Needed to Know Her Films emerges from Studios artist Onyeka Igwe’s ongoing book project, exploring the June Givanni Pan African Cinema Archive. Whilst researching some of the key film festivals that formed the basis of this collection, Igwe came across the works of Maureen Blackwood (b. 1960), Julie Dash (b. 1952), Safi Faye (1943-2023) and Sarah Maldoror (1929-2020). The screening highlights the vital roles these women played in collective filmmaking projects from the 1960s onwards and the Pan-African cinematic community they supported.
As part of the screening, Igwe presents Blackwood’s 1989 short Perfect Image?. Grappling with issues around skin lightening, scarification and hair, the film problematises notions of Black beauty through a series of musical and comedic sketches. It will be shown alongside Dash’s 1982 short Illusions, which similarly reflects on questions of visibility and appearance. The film follows a light-skin African American studio executive as she navigates colourism and artistic freedom in a male-dominated, 1940s Hollywood. Igwe screens Elsie Haas, Haitian Woman Painter and Filmmaker, a 1985 documentary directed by Faye highlighting a Caribbean artistic practice as it develops in Paris. Finally, Maldoror’s 1968 short Monangambé will be shown, set in colonial Angola under Portuguese rule, the story explores cultural difference and how a linguistic misunderstanding leads to the unjust torture of a prisoner.
Material from the June Givanni Pan African Cinema Archive will be on display throughout the evening for audience members to engage with.
