MNEMOSYNE and FESTIVAL NEWS

July 10th 2010
The first London screenings for the film installation of John Akomfrah’s new film “Mnemosyne” will take place at the prestigious BFI (British Film Institute) Gallery on London’s South Bank for eight weeks. Shot in Alaska on the 4K Red camera, the film interweaves rare archive footage from the 1950’s with the originally shot material. Admission to the screenings in the gallery are free.

Reviewed by the Director Ken Russell for The Times (London) he called it :
" a mind-blowing film that merges documentary and artistic essay in a way that astonishes, confounds and moves"

June 2010
Smoking Dogs Films are putting the final touches to the design of the installation for MNEMOSYNE at the BFI Gallery on the South Bank.

May 2010
John Akomfrah sat on the jury of the 2010 Tarifa International African Film Festival in southern Spain.

27th April 2010
John Akomfrah and Lina Gopaul delivered lectures on producing and directing at the EU- Babylon International Film Workshop in Abuja, Nigeria.

23rd April 2010
John delivered a lecture entitled “The Burden of Mnemosyne” at the San Francisco Art Institute.

January 2010
“Mnemosyne” opened at The Public in West Bromwich to fantastic critical response. 
October 2009

October 2009
John Akomfrah sat on the jury at the 53rd BFI London Film Festival along with Anjelica Huston, Charlotte Rampling, Mathieu Kassovitz, Ian Softley, and Jarvis Cocker.

DEVELOPMENT NEWS
Smoking Dogs Films are developing a feature length documentary on the greatest guitarist the world has ever known, Jimi Hendrix. Due for release in 2011.

Smoking Dogs Films is Executive Producing an independent feature length campaigning documentary on the crisis the American media faces due to deregulation of the industry. Provisionally entitled SOL, it is set for theatrical release in 2011.

Smoking Dogs Films are also collaborating with Turner Prize nominee Yinka Shonibare on a long term project entitled Autopersonification and a film installation with the esteemed and renowned cultural theorist Stuart Hall, set for display at International Visual Arts Institute in London’s Rivington Place Gallery in 2011.

THE NATIONAL COLLECTION
March 2009, three of the works made by John Akomfrah, Lina Gopaul and David Lawson, Signs of Empire , Images of Nationality and Handsworth Songs were acquired by the Tate Museum to be part of the National Collection.  The works were shown in Tate Britain for three months from March on a continuous loop in their own screening rooms.

John Akomfrah, Lina Gopaul and David Lawson were artists featured in the first major retrospective of the Black Audio Film Collective in the UK in 2007. The retrospective opened at the Foundation for Arts and Creative Technology in Liverpool and then The Arnolfini gallery in Bristol. The retrospective included all the feature films and documentaries made by the Collective and were screened in a specially designed gallery setting -designed by acclaimed architect and designer David Adjaye – architect of the new Nobel Prize Centre in Oslo.

Ghost of Songs Exhibition received rave reviews in:

The Guardian

Frieze Magazine

AWARDS
John Akomfrah was awarded an OBE for Services to Film in the 2008 New Years Honors list and collected the honor on Thursday 28th February from Buckingham Palace in London.
 
2009
The Genome Chronicles screened at Leipzig Documentary Film Festival Germany Oct 29 

July 2009 
Oil Spill – The Exxon Valdez Disaster was awarded the Grand Prize and John Akomfrah named Best Director at the DocuementART Film Festival in Romania.

The Producers and Director have between them won over twenty international awards including the prestigious British Film Institute Grierson Award for Documentary, The Best Film at the Sydney Film Festival, a Gold Hugo at Chicago International Film Festival and Best Documentary at the Melbourne Film Festival.

In 2003 the documentary Stan Tracey - The Godfather of British Jazz,  was shortlisted for the prestigious Grierson Award for Best Arts Programme of the Year.

In 2000, the docuemtaries The Wonderful World Of Louis Armstrong, Goldie: When Saturn ReturnzZ and Riot were awarded the Grand Digital Prize for their unique use of digital technology at the Cheonju International Film Festival in South Korea.