John Akomfrah: Memory Rooms

April 15 - 30, 2022

Pera Film presents an online selection of the single-channel works of the artist, director, curator John Akomfrah as part of SENKRON 'Simultaneous Video Exhibitions'. Co-founder of Black Audio Film Collective, Akomfrah weaves together original footage with archival material to create stirring, layered narratives that juxtapose personal and historical memory, past and present, and environmental and human crises.

In the program that will take place online between April 15 – 30; Handsworth Songs, a film essay on racial and social turmoil in 1980s England and the urban riots of 1985; Testament, which deals with the situation of post-colonial societies through the character of Abena, a former activist and new news presenter who returned to contemporary Ghana for the first time in years after the 1966 coup; Who Needs A Heart, a series of micro-narratives that follow the lives of a group of friends and lovers from 1965 to 1975; Speak Like A Child chronicling the relationships between three friends whose lives are irreversibly changed as a result of an event out of control, and The Nine Muses, which stylized and authentically chronicles the history of the mass exodus from Africa, the Caribbean, and South Asia to rebuild post-war England.

The program will be streamed at film.peramuzesi.org.tr between April 15 -30, and only be accessible to online audiences in Turkey. As per legal regulations, all our screenings are restricted to persons over 18 years of age, unless stated otherwise.

Handsworth Songs

Handsworth Songs

Testament

Testament

Who Needs A Heart

Who Needs A Heart

Speak Like A Child

Speak Like A Child

The Nine Muses

The Nine Muses

From the Age of Reason to the “Tortoise Trainer”

From the Age of Reason to the “Tortoise Trainer”

A Salon exhibition held in the Grand Palais in Paris on May 1, 1906 showcased an Ottoman painting. This was Osman Hamdi Bey’s famous “Tortoise Trainer”. 

Giacometti’s Final Works

Giacometti’s Final Works

Giacometti was selected for three important retrospectives at the New York Museum of Modern Art, the Tate Gallery in London and the Louisiana Museum of Art in Denmark, all of which were a great success. 

Midnight Stories: Hotel of Retro Dreams <br> Doğu Yücel

Midnight Stories: Hotel of Retro Dreams
Doğu Yücel

He didn’t expect this from me. And I hadn’t expected that we would decide to get married that day, at that moment. Everything happened all of a sudden, but exactly like it was supposed to happen in our day. We thought of the idea of marriage simultaneously, we smiled simultaneously, blinking and opening our eyes in unison.