After the Eleventh Hour: Reanimating Radical Black British Film Today

This panel discussion explores the renewed interest in 1980s Black British Workshop films and asks how they are being reshown today—across galleries, cinemas, festivals, and digital platforms—and to what political and cultural ends.

How do screening contexts shape the meaning of these works? What curatorial strategies best preserve or reanimate their radical potential? And how do today's screenings relate to the films’ original modes of distribution and reception?

Focusing on the politics of circulation, value, and memory, this event brings together curators and cultural workers to reflect on the afterlives of the Workshop Movement in Britain and the possibilities for critical reactivation in the present.

Panellists:

• Dr Matthew Barrington – Curator of Rewinding the Airwaves and film programmer at the Barbican
• Dr Jess Boyall – Curator of Step Forward: Sonic Visions with LCVA and Ormside Projects
• Professor Rod Stoneman – Former commissioning editor for Channel 4’s Eleventh Hour slot