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The scandal of racism @BFI British Film Institute
In the 60th year since the 1965 Race Relations Act, the BFI has chosen to cancel the popular and longest-running Black History film series, African Odysseys, against the wishes of 17,400 people. The 18-year-old programme has a track record of filling the Southbank 450 seat cinema.
The BFI cannot justify the decision as the films frequently sold out and were curated by grassroots volunteers who generated over £6 million in labour/consultancy for the institution HERE . This effort was clearly not appreciated but is one of the many reasons they should have run a race equality impact assessment as required by the 2010 Public Sector Equality Duty which they refused to do.
After an entire year of refusing to meet the curators of the Steering Committee and refusing to answer 8 simple questions HERE The BFI are now:
- Deleting comments from their Youtube channel which mention African Odysseys
- Ignoring/refusing to respond to written complaints/questions
- Telling their audience that African Odysseys is 'on pause'
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Telling their audience that the Steering Committee made 'unreasonable demands' . The only 'demands' made were to answer these 8 questions HERE
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Telling their audience that senior management and governors did not know that African Odysseys would end if BFI went ahead with the cuts/redundancies without an equality survey. This is despite the fact that BFI CEO Ben Roberts and Chair of Governors Jay Hunt were repeatedly told this in writing since last year and despite the presence of the 17,400 petition launched in September 2024 and the 18 updates since HERE
This behaviour cannot be separated from the current climate of attacks on Black history provision in UK universities and museums overseas or the abuse directed at the Windrush generation. The 80-year-old Professor Gus John was twice disrespected by the BFI after he offered his considerable expertise to them for free and wrote them an extensively researched nine page open letter HERE His offer was dismissed by CEO Ben Roberts.
This type of behaviour can be seen as the culmination of 17 years of discrimination against the curation, promotion and archiving of African Diaspora films at the BFI and the huge audiences of black and white people that came to view them.
As proof of this history of race problems at the BFI, read HERE the letter of protest sent to CEO Ben Roberts and Heather Stewart by the African Odysseys Steering Committee on 23rd June 2020, the year of George Floyd. This formal letter was sent after many years of numerous informal complaints.
The BFI has taken no action to address these multiple serious issues, for example, in five entire years, Sight and Sound edited by Mike Williams, has never done a feature on African Odysseys' repeated full houses, successful premieres, or numerous talented African diaspora producers/directors. Even superstars like Terry Jervis with an incredible track record in Hollywood/Motown/BBC etc HERE was repeatedly ignored. That trailer was filmed at the BFI Southbank.
The BFI/Sight and Sound knew full well about such amazing Black success stories but acted to suppress them, repeatedly for 17 years, despite numerous requests from the Steering Committee that was filling up their Southbank cinemas with Black audiences that had never been there before.
The lack of care and consideration by the 88% white executive management team, which was totally white until 2021, are self-evident in this cancellation without consultation and performative interest in African diaspora cinema.
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