Description:

(John Akomfrah, 2013, UK, DCP, 103 min.)

Acclaimed British documentarian and film essayist John Akomfrah’s portrait of sociologist and cultural critic Stuart Hall (who died in 2014) is a remarkable look at one of the great contemporary intellectuals. Hall was Jamaican-born, black, and rose up through the 1950’s white academic establishment in Britain, not only becoming a respected professor and writer but also a public figure who used the mass media to discuss race, class, politics, and more. It is these television and radio appearances that Akomfrah primarily draws from, letting Hall’s own words shape the film, along with excerpts of jazz great Miles Davis, a particular passion of Hall’s. Akomfrah creates an intimate, accessible document without sacrificing the ideas that dominated Hall’s thinking and life.