As a tribute to the life of the celebrated Jamaican intellectual and cultural theorist Stuart Hall, who died on February 10 at the age of 82, the T&T Film Festival (TTFF) is hosting a screening of The Stuart Hall Project, tonight at the festival's offices at 199 Belmont Circular Road, Belmont.
Hall, who was born and raised in Jamaica, went to the United Kingdom in 1950 to study at Oxford University. He settled in Britain, where he helped evolve the concept of multiculturalism, and became a key architect of the academic discipline known as cultural studies, said a release from the TTFF.
A major figure of the New Left movement, Hall was a founding editor of the seminal New Left Review.
His theories on the concepts of identity and hybridity, class and colonialism, politics, gender, culture and art have influenced the thinking of many people over the decades; for a time he was arguably the greatest public intellectual in Britain.
Directed by acclaimed documentary filmmaker John Akomfrah, The Stuart Hall Project is a portrait composed entirely of photographic and film footage from Hall's archive, from his childhood in Jamaica to his time as a TV and radio presenter with the BBC and beyond.
The film–which is 100 minutes long–is complemented by a sublime score comprised of the music of Miles Davis, who, as Hall once put it, "put his finger on my soul" when Hall was a young man.
As a number of critics have noted, the film serves not only as an illuminating biography of Hall, but also as a potent "alternate" history of the world in the latter half of the 20th century.
The Stuart Hall Project had its premiere in 2013 at the Sundance Film Festival. It went on to screen at many film festivals, including the 2013 T&T Film Festival, to great acclaim.
The film was also released in cinemas in the UK.
The screening of The Stuart Hall Project begins at 7.30 pm, and doors open at 6.45 pm.
Patrons are advised to arrive at the screening early as space is limited. Refreshments will be available.
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