Testimonies was a 3-month nationwide hybrid programme of film screenings, conversations and networking events celebrating the work of Black British women and non-binary documentary filmmakers.

It took place in-person and online February - May 2022 in partnership with Aya Films and was made possible with support from BFI Doc Society.

 
 
 
 

Photography: Freezeframe Media, SEPH Group, Najma Abukar, HighWay Creation


The online screening and Q&A series provided an opportunity for audiences to engage with a rich, but often sidelined body of work: from pioneering archive films to contemporary work from emerging filmmakers and visual artists, traversing questions of heritage, identity, the Black community's resistance of and struggle against injustice, as well as the centring of Black joy. 

There was also the opportunity to come together at regional showcases and networking events taking place in four cities across the country, providing a space for filmmakers, artists and documentary audiences to connect and share their experiences.

It was a joy to bear witness to these testimonies and the craft of Black British documentary talent, memorialising them on screen.

In addition to the main programme, for those looking to continue their journey with this incredible and ever-expanding body of work, here is an online resource list.


The Black Cop (dir. Cherish Oteka)

The Black Cop is an intimate portrait of Gamal 'G' Turawa, an ex-Metropolitan police officer, exploring his memories of racially profiling and harassing black people and homophobia in his early career. Now an openly gay man, Turawa’s story is a multi-layered one and sits in the centre of three pivotal moments in recent British history, from the black communities’ resistance of oppressive policing, to the push for LGBTQIA equality and the aftermath of the west African 'farming' phenomenon, where white families took care of black children outside the remit of local authorities.

Being Womxn
And Still I Rise (dir. Ngozi Onwurah)
Amine (dir. Beverley Bennett)

From a historical traversion of Black women’s media image in acclaimed director Ngozi Onwurah’s lesser known And Still I Rise (1992), to the testimonies of Black women across the country captured in artist-filmmaker Beverley Bennett’s contemporary work Amine (2017), this programme explores the beingness of Black women in the UK, across time.

Taking Black texts - Maya Angelou and Frantz Fanon - as their starting points, the two films lay bare the ways in which Black women continue to navigate, negotiate and push back against the different labels and expectations thrust upon them by simply existing.

Missing Voices

A Very Brit(ish) Voice (dir. Jaha Browne)
Black & Welsh (dir. Liana Stewart)
Super Sam (dir. Sandi Hudson-Francis)

The filmmakers in this programme highlight the importance of documentary as an archival tool, capturing and recording voices left out of visual histories of the UK. These three intimate and inter-generational portraits of Black individuals and communities across the country - from the Windrush generation and beyond - explore ideas of heritage, the places we call “home” and of finding community. They disrupt and challenge notions of what it means to be “British” and interrogate whose stories get to be recorded and remembered.

Queer Shorts

The Glorious Ones (dir. Somina Fombo)
Tegan (dir. Ngaio Anyia)
Twinkleberry (dir. Daisy Ifama)

Several generations of queer black women and non binary folk share their glorious moments in The Glorious Ones, fresh from its premiere at BFI Flare London LGBTIQ+ Film Festival; in Tegan, we discover the unbridled dedication of Bristolian Tegan Vincent-Cooke, a young black woman with cerebral palsy, to reach the 2024 Paralympics; and Twinkleberry tells the story of a school in a small West Country border town that had over 30 openly queer students in one year group between 2005 to 2012, produced - along with Tegan - as part of the inaugural Netflix Documentary Talent Fund.

We Persist

business as usual: hostile environment: a REMIX (dir. Alberta Whittle)
Towards A Black Testimony: Prayer/Protest/Peace (dir. Languid Hands)

These two moving image works interrogate institutional anti-blackness and Black people’s continued resistance and persistence in the face of it. They open up ideas of film as praxis, and help us to think about the role of documentary, of documenting, in enacting systemic change. They are fluid and evolving projects that bring to the fore the perpetual nature of the struggle, both bearing witness to Black testimonies, but at the same time forcing us to question how effective they can be when they are continually sidelined and ignored.


Have you seen the online resource list?

 

 This project is made with the support of the BFI Doc Society Fund