In an era of “post-truth” politics and “fake news”, public intellectuals that champion revolutionary ideas are coming under fire. Trump’s America and Brexitannia are two examples of where the death of experts in public discourse can turn dystopian futurism into everyday reality. Today’s challenge, then, is in keeping intellectual analysis alive and, in stark contrast to the revolutionary role of the public intellectual in the post-war era, the question becomes... how did we get here?

Join writer and historian Edson Burton for a short introduction to two empowering and inspirational voices as part of a special event for Black History Month. Looking at two of the most insightful and mobilising voices of the 20th century, Afro-Caribbean psychiatrist, philosopher and revolutionary Frantz Fanon and cultural theorist Stuart Hall, this double bill brings colonialism and its emotional impact to the fore.

Very much in the spirit of Fanon, artist and filmmaker Isaac Julien explodes conventions and challenges the status quo by traversing traditional modes of documentary filmmaking in favour of the poetic, letting Fanon’s intellectual inquiry speak for itself against a tapestry of locations, interviews and archive footage in Frantz Fanon: Black Skin, White Mask. Having already appeared as critical voice in Julien’s portrait of Fanon, John Akomfrah's The Stuart Hall Project, reveals another remarkable mind. Bringing the personal and the political together in perfect harmony to a personally mixed Miles Davis soundtrack, Akomfrah lets archive, memory and questions of identity mingle with his scholarly pursuits.

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