[Documentary] The Nine Muses: an exploration into the UK’s immigrant experience from 1949 to 1970

 

Screened a the 54th BFI Film Festival in 2010 The Nine Muses (dir. John Akomfrah) retells the story of the migrant journey to Britain over the backdrop of Homer’s poem ‘The Odyssey’.

Part documentary, part existential sci-fi film, Akomfrah combines archive footage and striking arctic landscapes to unusual and genre-defying effect. The Nine Muses offers an intricate meditation on journeys, migration, memory and the power of elegy. Drawing on, and adapting writings from, among others, Samuel Beckett, Dante Alighieri, Emily Dickinson, Rabindranath Tagore and James Joyce, the film muses on chance, fate and redemption, eventually unfolding into an evocative absorbing work of great beauty as it takes us on a multi-layered quest for knowledge and identity.

The Nine Muses is being shown at the ICA from January 19th for two weeks (there’s a Q&A with the director on the 19th).

 

 

via The ICA

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