The Stuart Hall Project

Having redefined what documentaries can do in his groundbreaking Nine Muses, Ghana-born British director and rogue historian John Akomfrah once again revisits the themes of postcolonialism, the Jamaican diaspora and Homer's Odyssey to tell the story of immigrant Stuart Hall, heavyweight cultural theorist and key figure of the New Left.

Shunning the conventional talking heads approach of most biographical documentaries, Akomfrah weaves a patchwork narrative from archival footage and soundbites, many from Hall's own Open University programmes, resulting in a bricolage of home movies, family photographs, and documentary footage of social upheaval.

The music of Miles Davis, which plays in chronological order, provides a soundscape for this cinematic collage, and forges a sense of history unfolding as world events and Stuart Hall's experiences as black immigrant/academic play out before our eyes. The personal is thus deeply political, and Hall's accessible, self-reflexive politics of fragmented identity are deservedly centre stage. [Rachel Bowles]