Black History Studies took part in Project Tottenham, Tottenham’s first community film showcase.  We received our first external funding too which was a bonus. We would like to thank the 1593 Partnership, The New Black Film Network, JetBlackInk Multimedia and Sonia Scully for their support with this project.

For Project Tottenham, Black History Studies organised ‘The Life & Times of Marcus Garvey on Screen’ project which was held over two days on Friday 28^th September and Saturday 29^th September 2012 at the Marcus Garvey Library in Tottenham.

This programme of documentary screenings celebrated the life and times of the Jamaican cultural and political leader Marcus Mosiah Garvey and this year sees the 125th Anniversary of his birth and the 100th Anniversary of his first visit to the UK in 1912.

Our programme consisted of three films shown over two days which were ‘Look for me in The Whirlwind’ which we showed on Friday and the double screening of ‘Marcus Garvey: Giant of Politics’ and ‘The Promised Ship’ on the Saturday.

We showed the three films at the Marcus Garvey Library to provide an opportunity for the community to get a real insight into why the library has honoured Garvey by using his name. We also wanted to educate the audience on the life and contribution of Marcus Garvey as a Black History icon.

Despite the short time for promotion and the clash of our event with the lecture tour of African American scholar Ashra Kwesi, the screenings were well attended with 40 delegates on the Friday and 38 delegates on the Saturday. The screenings went well and we received some good feedback from the delegates and staff at the Marcus Garvey Library. On the Saturday, we had some technical difficulties with the equipment used but were able to solve the problem quickly without too much disruption to the screening. We even had a sing along while laptops were changed over. The screenings and the exposure that Project Tottenham has given us has led to delegates who had not heard of Black History Studies before are now attending our events and have booked onto our courses.

At the screenings, we conducted interviews with delegates and recorded some of the discussions after the films which can be viewed at the links below: