DOXA: Stuart Hall Project, Discussion Only

In celebration of Black History Month, DOXA’s Motion Pictures Film Series and the SFU Institute for Humanities are very pleased to present the Vancouver premiere of John Akomfrah’s remarkable film portrait The Stuart Hall Project.The Stuart Hall Project marries clips of Hall’s work, drawn from more than 100 hours of archival footage, with the music of Miles Davis (a lifelong obsession of Hall’s). From the beginning of his career, the personal and political were intimately conjoined, but Hall credits his wife Catherine with introducing him to the integration of lived experience and ideology. “Feminism taught me the difference between a conviction in the head and a change in the way you live,” he explains. The film eschews standard biographical linearity in favour of a more expansive and free-floating approach that examines everything from the Suez Crisis to the Vietnam War. An effortlessly graceful testimony to the power and poetry of human thought, composed of images drawn from newsreel clips, interviews and personal photos, The Stuart Hall Project closes with a quote from Antonio Gramsci: “I’m a pessimist because of intelligence, but an optimist because of will.” A fitting summation of Hall’s profound humanity and enduring commitment to reason and compassion applied in equal measure.