African Film Curator to receive BAFTA Special Award
A pioneering curator, writer and programmer of African film, June Givanni, is set to receive the British Academy of Film and Television Arts Awards, more commonly known as BAFTA Film Awards, for outstanding British contribution to cinema award.
According to the Guardian UK, Givanni, 73, is the founder of a London archive that has amassed more than 10,000 items – including films, ephemera, manuscripts, audio, photography and posters – documenting Pan-African cinema over 40 years.
The volunteer-run archive is one of the world’s most important collections documenting the moving image for the African continent and its diaspora and includes artefacts that might otherwise not have been preserved.
Items from the June Givanni Pan African Cinema Archive (JGPACA) have also formed the basis of public exhibitions – most recently Raven Row in east London.
“The award gives us an opportunity to tell people what we’re trying to do, because people’s ideas about archives are so varied… Our long-term goal is to enrich knowledge and understanding of Pan-African cinema’s place within the cultural sector, it’s creative impact and legacy internationally,” Givanni, was born in what was then British Guiana and moved to the UK aged seven, told the UK Guardian.
Givanni began her career bringing Third Eye London’s first Festival of Third World Cinema to London, before working as a film programmer at the Greater London Council’s ethnic minorities unit. She is regarded as a resource for African and African diaspora cinema.
