In this new series, the short films of emerging artists are paired with works that inspired their practice, creating a space where past and present, short and feature-length, resonate against one another. Come early / stay late to chat with Darryl and collect your copy of the Traces zine featuring written reflections from curator and writer Orphee Kashala.
 

Revival 24

Darryl Daley | 2024 | UK | 3’ | no dialogue

Revival 24 captures a liminal moment in which, through the spirit, the Black body transcends a singular notion of masculinity to break free from the constraints of linear temporality. The film reflects an alternative tangible framework, where the contemporary and the archival converge, embodying an “untethered now”.

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The Last Angel of History

John Akomfrah / Black Audio Film Collective | 1995 | UK | 46’ | English

The Last Angel of History is one of the most influential video-essays of the 1990s, influencing filmmakers and inspiring conferences, novels, and exhibitions. Black Audio Film Collective’s exploration of the chromatic possibilities of digital video is embedded within a mythology of the future that creates connections between Black non-popular culture, outer space, and the limits of the human condition. This cinematic essay posits science fiction – with tropes such as alien abduction, estrangement, and genetic engineering – as a metaphor for the Pan-African experience of forced displacement, cultural alienation, and otherness.

Included are interviews with Black cultural figures, from musicians DJ Spooky, Goldie, and Derek May, who discuss the importance of George Clinton to their own music, to George Clinton himself. In keeping with the futuristic tenor of the film, the interviews are intercut with images of Pan-African life from different periods of history, jumping between time and space from the past to the future to the present, not unlike the visual mode of many rock videos of the film’s time. (LUX)