Episode 22 | Filmmaker John Akomfrah and the ‘Precarity’ of Black Genius 

Left of Black host Mark Anthony Neal is joined in the studio by filmmaker John Akomfrah,

A founding member of the influential Black Audio Film Collective, which started in London in 1982 alongside his longtime collaborators David Lawson and Lina Gopaul; the trio later founded Smoking Dogs Films. Akomfrah’s groundbreaking film The Last Angel in History (1996) is recognized as a seminal and foundational text of the AfroFuturism movement Akomfrah discusses his film Precarity,a new three-channel video installation and meditation on the life of Jazz artist Buddy Bolden, which debuted at Prospect.4: The Lotus in Spite of the Swamp in New Orleans in November of 2017 and  later installed at the  Nasher Museum (Duke University). The film offers a meditation on the genius of Bolden, generally recognized as one of the most important founding voices of American Jazz, who was institutionalized at the eight of his powers as an instrumentalist. Akomfrah’s most recent works also include the three-screen installation The Unfinished Conversation (2012), a moving portrait of the cultural theorist Stuart Hall’s life and work. Akomfrah was at Duke University to deliver the Annual Rothschild Lecture at the Nasher Museum.