Discussions
In Conversation with John Akomfrah and Sherrilyn Ifill
A powerful and timely conversation between artist and filmmaker John Akomfrah and Sherrilyn Ifill, civil rights lawyer and founding director of the 14th Amendment Center for Law & Democracy at the Howard University School of Law.
Akomfrah’s newly created multi-channel film installation, which brings together multiple perspectives of young activists during the U.S. Civil Rights movement of the 1960s to raise issues related to memory and social change, debuts at the Baltimore Museum of Art November 16, 2025, through February 1, 2026.
Akomfrah and Ifill delve into the artistic and political dimensions of the work and examine how film can bear witness to the past while speaking urgently to the present and our shifting cultural landscape.
This event will include ASL interpretation and live captioning by Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART) services. The auditorium is wheelchair accessible and assistive listening devices are available. Please see Accessibility at the BMA for additional resources to support your visit.
Tickets
Free. Registration required.
Schedule
2:30 p.m. – Doors
3 p.m. – Conversation
4 p.m. – Program ends
About the Artists
John Akomfrah
John Akomfrah founded with artists David Lawson and Lina Gopaul the influential Black Audio Film Collective (1982–1998) and made his directorial debut with Handsworth Songs (1986), which addressed the fallout from the riots that took place in the Handsworth district of Birmingham and London in 1985. Lawson and Gopaul remain his collaborators today, alongside Ashitey Akomfrah, as Smoking Dogs Films (1998–present). John Akomfrah’s work has been shown in museums and exhibitions around the world, and his films have garnered multiple awards. He received the Artes Mundi Prize in 2017 and a Knighthood for services to the Arts in the 2023 New Year Honours. The BMA honored him in 2024 as an Artist Who Inspires. As The Guardian put it, Akomfrah “has secured a reputation as one of the U.K.’s most pioneering filmmakers [whose] poetic works have grappled with race, identity, and postcolonial attitudes for over three decades.”