'Stuart Hall was kind of a rock star for us', writes director John Akomfrah. 'For many of my generation in the 1970s … he was one of the few people of colour we saw on television who wasn’t crooning, dancing, or running. His very iconic presence on this most public of platforms suggested all manner of "impossible possibilities".'

Stuart Hall emigrated from Jamaica to the UK in 1951 to take a place at Oxford University. He became a founding figure of cultural studies with a resounding and ongoing influence on British intellectual life. He is one of the most influential and esteemed cultural theorists of his generation. John Akomfrah's documentary The Stuart Hall Project (2013) takes the viewer on a rollercoaster ride through the upheavals, struggles, and turning points that made the twentieth century the century of campaigning and of global political and cultural change. Comprised of archive footage and set to the music of Miles Davis, it matches the agility of its subject, playing on memory, identity, and the changing landscape of the late twentieth century.

Dir. John Akomfrah | 103min | Rated M16

In association with our current show A Place Apart. The third of three Winter Weekend Screenings. See also La Noire de … and Mauri.