- dir. Menelik Shabazz
- year. 1988
- country. UK
- run-time. 88 mins
- rating. 15
- format. 16mm
£6.00 (£4.50 conc.)
Doors 17:30 - Film 18:00
This summer, Deptford Cinema is proud to host a retrospective of a key figure of black British cinema: the internationally acclaimed director Menelik Shabazz. With this retrospective we hope, in our own small way, to introduce his body of work to a wider public and reaffirm him as one of the most significant artists and activists in contemporary British film.
TIME AND JUDGEMENT is an effortlessly engaging and ambitious sci-fi/documentary that combines biblical prophecy with events across the African diaspora between 1980 and 1987 (set to an incredible soundtrack). Archive footage includes Haile Selassie, Bob Marley, Kwame Nkrumah, Maurice Bishop, Walter Rodney, Kwame Toure, Bernie Grant. Shown from the director's own 16mm print!
Other films in the series: BURNING AN ILLUSION, Activist shorts, THE STORY OF LOVER'S ROCK
"I wanted to make a film that took a panoramic view of events happening within the pan African World during an eight year span. It was a film where I could be creatively free. I had a guaranteed TV slot on the newly formed Channel Four under Commissioner Alan Fountain. I wanted to add many layers to the film, and I was deep into my Rastafari phase and so I wanted to combine spirituality, symbolism, politics, poetry into a blender. Out came a film that even today I am not sure I fully understand, my own creation. After transmission on Channel Four the following day, a conservative MP made a statement in Parliament condemning the film. I wish I could remember his name. His statement got coverage in the Evening Standard which was where I found out. It was only after a decade had passed that I realised that my film was the most radical film about the black experience ever showed on British TV. Never to be repeated!"
— Menelik Sabazz
“Undoubtedly one of the most fascinating and substantial documents to come out of the independent black film-making community in recent years.”