kviff.com
News
Festival Guide
  • Tickets and Festival Pass
  • Accommodations
  • Transportation
  • Festival cinemas
  • No Barriers project
  • Kids at the festival
  • Festival Shop
Program
  • Catalogue of films
  • Accompanying programme
  • Archive of films
  • Audience award
  • KVIFF Talks
  • Film Entry
Film Industry
  • Industry accreditation
  • Film Industry at KVIFF
  • Industry Days Programme
  • KVIFF Eastern Promises
  • KVIFF Talents
Press
  • Press accreditation
  • Press Service
  • For download
  • Press releases
  • Photogallery
  • Videogallery
About the festival
  • Festival description
  • Programme sections
  • Awards
  • History
  • We support non-profits
  • Photogallery
  • Partners
  • Why We Support the Festival
  • Contacts
CZ
Sign in
Film Archive

The Nine Muses

Another View 2011 / The Nine Muses / United Kingdom, Ghana 2010

John Akomfrah has created a documentary essay about immigrants of different races who came to Britain after the Second World War. In this experimental film he combines archive material and footage of Alaska’s winter wilderness with music from different sources and aphorisms by authors drawn from different cultural spheres.

The Nine Muses The Nine Muses

Synopsis

John Akomfrah has created a documentary essay about immigrants of different races who came to Britain after the Second World War. In his film he combines archive material with shots of the Alaskan winter wilderness. Aphorisms from Homer, Shakespeare, and Joyce – as well as from authors of different cultural spheres (e.g. Chinese poet Li Po) – give a new dimension to the contemplative passing images. The soundtrack has a corresponding diversity, with works by Franz Schubert, Lisa Gerrard, and even Indian folk melodies. The individual film chapters are dedicated to the nine Muses, while a determining role is played by their mother Mnemosyne, the personification of memory in Greek mythology. And it is she who is invoked again and again by means of associative images, in which the harmonizing element of water plays a key role. This does not, however, detract from the urgency of the images of foreigners in a foreign land, burdened by feelings of alienation, subjection, and endless drudgery in authoritarian white society.

About the film

92 min / Color, HD CAM

Director John Akomfrah / Screenplay John Akomfrah / Dir. of Photography Dewald Aukema / Music Trevor Mathison / Editor Mikka Leskinen, Ben Hunt / Producer Lina Gopaul / Production Smoking Dogs Films / Cast Trevor Mathison, David Lawson, John Akomfrah / Contact Cactus Three, Smoking Dogs Films

About the director

John Akomfrah

John Akomfrah (b. 1957, Accra, Ghana) hails from a family of Ghanaian political activists. He grew up in London and graduated in sociology from Portsmouth Polytechnic (1982). He cofounded the London media outfit Black Audio Film Collective, a seminal cine-cultural workshop where he directed a broad range of work. In 1986 he debuted with the controversial documentary Handsworth Songs, a film that explores the historical experience of blacks in British society. He also shot other thematically similar, engagé movies, both fiction and documentary, including Testament (1988), Who Needs a Heart? (1991), and Seven Songs for Malcolm X (1993), and had success in television (Dr. Martin Luther King: Days of Hope, 1997; The Wonderful World of Louis Armstrong, 1999). In 2008 he was made an Officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (O.B.E.) for his services to the film industry.

Contacts

Cactus Three
440 Lafayette st., 10003, New York
United States of America
Phone: +1 212 674 140 0
Fax: +1 212 674 140 0
E-mail: [email protected]

Smoking Dogs Films
26 Shacklewell Lane, E8 2EZ, London
United Kingdom
Phone: +44 207 249 664 4
E-mail: [email protected]

Other partners
Newsletter

First-hand brews throughout the year.
Be among the first to learn about upcoming events and other news. We only send the newsletter when we have something to say.

Follow us on the web:

The Karlovy Vary International Film Festival
is part of the KVIFF Group family, which covers other projects as well:

© 2025 KVIFF GROUP

Rules for Visitors / Website visitors privacy policy / GTC / Personal Data Protection / Rules for Claim / Rules and Regulations / Contacts