A screening and panel discussion marking the 40th anniversary of the multi-awarding winning documentary feature film Handsworth Songs.
Handsworth Songs was first screened at the Birmingham Film & Television Festival in October 1986; from October 2026 it will be on view at Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery, now part of the city's collections.
The debut feature of Black Audio Film Collective, Handsworth Songs is widely acclaimed for its innovations and interventions in documentary form and as a landmark of Black British cinema. Commissioned by Channel 4 for their series Britain: The Lie of the Land, it won seven prizes internationally, including the John Grierson Award for Best Documentary (BFI).
To mark the film's 40th anniversary during Black History Month, University of Birmingham - in collaboration with Mockingbird Cinema, Birmingham Museums Trust, Lux and others - is leading a free event that will combine a public screening of Handsworth Songs together with a Q&A panel featuring celebrated film composer Trevor Mathison (Founder of both the Black Audio Film Collective in 1982 and Dubmorphology in 2005), award-winning historian and cultural scholar Professor Daniel McNeil (Stuart Hall Interdisciplinary Chair at University of Birmingham) amongst other speakers. Our panellists will explore the meshwork of sociology, archive footage, and interviews that make up the film and consider what it means in Birmingham in 2026.
The Mockingbird Cinema is located in the Custard Factory in Digbeth - please use the West Midlands Journey Planner to help you plan getting to and from the event. Find parking details for the venue. Please contact the venue directly via boxoffice@mockingbirdcinema.com or 0121 820 0439 for venue accessibility.
The University will also be organising a community, researcher and creative workshop - by invitation only - on the same day as, and shortly before, the screening.
This event is part of the University of Birmingham's Black History Month commemorative programme and is being delivered through a partnership between the University's Culture Forward initiative and the ESRC Festival of Social Sciences.
Image: Shared from BAM
Senior Lecturer in American Literature and Cultures
Department of English Literature
Dr John Fagg is a Senior Lecturer with research focus on early-twentieth-century American art and literature and explores the ways in which cultural forms adapted to the new circumstances.
