Menelik Shabazz: Rebel Generation at Hyde Park Picture House

Discover the life and work of award-winning film director, producer, and writer Menelik Shabazz at Hyde Park Picture House this October.

A pioneering figure who was born in Barbados and moved to the UK aged five, Shabazz worked as a director across both fiction and documentary, while helping foster Black talent through initiatives such as the Ceddo Film and Video Workshop, Black Filmmaker (bfm) magazine, the bfm International Film Festival and, later in life, as a film producer working in Nigeria’s Nollywood, before his passing on 28 June 2021 in Zimbabwe.

HPPH’s extended retrospective is presented in partnership with Menelik’s daughter, Khemi and features some of the filmmakers best known work, alongside rarer cuts and an interactive workshop delivered by colleague Winstan Whitter (Sun 19 Oct), who will help participants explore Shabazz’s use of archival footage. Aimed at aspiring filmmakers and archivists, the workshop should help illuminate what makes Shabazz such an interesting, innovative voice in film, while continuing his legacy of uplifting future artists.

HPPH’s extended retrospective is presented in partnership with Menelik’s daughter, Khemi and features some of the filmmakers best known work, alongside rarer cuts and an interactive workshop

Menelik Shabazz: Rebel Generation starts with the filmmaker’s 1981 debut feature Burning an Illusion which will be introduced by Khemi Shabazz on Sunday 5 October. Following the frustrations in life and love of a young black woman living in Thatcher’s London this was the first British film to feature a Black woman in the lead role. Following a few days later accompanied by a talk with filmmaker Imruh Bakari, 1988’s Time and Judgement: A Diary of a 400 Year Exile (Wed 8 Oct) is a radical sci-fi documentary that mixes mediums as it combines religious prophecy with a collage of recent events across the African diaspora.

Those two titles should provide a glimpse into Shabazz’s range as an artist. Accompanying them in the programme at HPPH is an equally ecclectic session of short films under the banner Young, Rebel and Black before the workshop on Sunday 19 October. While the season draws to a close on Saturday 25 October with 2011 documentary The Story of Lovers Rock which puts together the story of an important genre of British reggae that centred around female voices in the UK at a time of heightened political and racial tension.