As he prepares to represent Britain at the Venice Biennale, Akomfrah talks about fleeing Ghana aged nine, the Rwanda fiasco, and creating images that shift the dial
If I’d met him 50-odd years ago, John Akomfrah says, with the infectious giggle that punctuates his conversation, two words would have sprung immediately to my mind: “Black nerd.” He was the kid at school who soaked up every bit of cultural learning going, who always had his head in a book on the bus. There was, of course, he says, “some connection between the hostility of the outside world in the 1960s and 1970s and the refuge kids like me found in books. I was always looking for things that allowed you to imagine this place otherwise. That’s why I loved going to the Tate Gallery as a child; that’s why I loved going to the cinema,” he smiles again. “And don’t forget, television wasn’t exactly a refuge for a Black kid in the 1970s…”
If Akomfrah, now a youthful 66, sponged up that culture in his formative years, the past four decades have seen him reinventing it, in artistic film-making that is constantly curious to re-evaluate imagined pasts. In this way, Sir John – he was knighted in last year’s New Year’s honours – never stops making sense of the political present. With the news agenda full of postcolonial insanity – a Tory government pinning its desperate election hopes on deporting 300 refugees to Rwanda – he feels like the wisest of choices to represent the nation at this month’s Venice Biennale.
