‘Civil Rights Documentary Cinema and the 1960s: Transatlantic Conversations on History, Race and Rights’ (British Academy, London)

This conference – held in memory of American social activist, politician and leader in the civil rights movement Julian Bond (1940-2015) – brings together documentary filmmakers, activists, and film, history and media scholars. Its focus is films based in civil rights history and inspired by it. It promotes a trans-Atlantic exchange of ideas around film production, activist subjects, and historical research in the making of civil rights cinema, history and cultural memory. It examines race and rights – activism, massive resistance, film and visual cultures – to intervene creatively in the history of the 1960s and in the historiography of the civil rights movement.

Speakers include:

• John Akomfrah OBE, Smoking Dogs Films
• Dr Reece Auguiste, University of Colorado, US
• Eduardo Montes-Bradley, Writer and director with Heritage Films Project at the University of Virginia, US
• Professor Clayborne Carson, Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute, Stanford University, US