June Givanni

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Articles

“Stop motion is live action in miniature”: Henry Selick in conversation

Aug 23, 2024 | bfi.org.uk | June Givanni |Sam Wigley

At the California Institute of the Arts in the 1970s, Henry Selick was one of the few students who attended both the Disney-centric character animation course and the one for experimental animation. That duality presaged things to come. Selick has always had one foot in the big studios, directing his stop-motion features at the likes of Disney (The Nightmare Before Christmas, 1993), Laika (Coraline, 2009) and Netflix (Wendell & Wild, 2022).
Critics on critics: Leila Latif and Ellen E. Jones

Aug 22, 2024 | bfi.org.uk | June Givanni |Sam Wigley |Matt Igoe

To inaugurate a new BFB series in which critics excavate the minds of fellow critics, film journalist Leila Latif meets Ellen E. Jones, the author of Screen Deep: How Film and TV Can Solve Racism and Save the World. 22 August 2024Leila Latif: How has the reaction to the book been so far? Ellen E. Jones: I anticipated it being more confrontational, but people seem to be on their best behaviour.
Adjoa Andoh: swinging the lens

Aug 22, 2024 | bfi.org.uk | June Givanni |Sam Wigley |Matt Igoe |Josh Slater-Williams

June Givanni: Your character Lady Danbury is central to both Bridgerton [2020-] and the Queen Charlotte [2023] historical drama series. How culturally significant was it to have these come out of the Shondaland development stable? Adjoa Andoh: I don’t think there would have been that interest in ‘swinging the lens’ on the narrative in this way without someone like Shonda Rhimes [the creator of Grey’s Anatomy, 2005-; and Scandal, 2012-18].
June Givanni on John Akomfrah

May 1, 2024 | plastermagazine.com | June Givanni

8 min read June Givanni and John Akomfrah have known each other for the full length of their 40-year careers. Givanni is an acclaimed curator and the founder of the June Givanni Pan African Cinema Archive (JGPACA), a resource for the promotion of African and African diaspora cinema and culture, of which Akomfrah is a longtime patron. This year, she won the 2024 BAFTA for Outstanding British Contribution to Cinema. This personal essay was published in Plaster‘s special edition print with John...
Arthur Jafa revisited

Dec 18, 2023 | bfi.org.uk | June Givanni

Director of photography on Julie Dash’s Daughters of the Dust, John Akomfrah’s documentary Seven Songs for Malcolm X and Spike Lee’s Crooklyn, Arthur Jafa has crafted an oeuvre that also encompasses music, philosophy and science-fiction art. He had a wide-ranging conversation with Black Film Bulletin co-founder June Givanni in London in February 1993, excerpts from which are reproduced here.
Horace Ové, RIP

Sep 18, 2023 | bfi.org.uk | Zak Ové |Ashley Clark |June Givanni

Farewell to the pioneer of Black British film and TV, who has died aged 86. Horace Ové © BFI National ArchiveSir Horace Ové, who has died aged 86, was the pioneering filmmaker who paved the way for future generations of Black directors in the UK. His 1976 film Pressure, which documents the life of second generation West Indians living in London, is heralded as the first full-length Black British film.
Talking with Tim Burton: “I’m like a vampire. I’ve been killed and resuscitated many times”

Sep 15, 2023 | bfi.org.uk | Lou Thomas |June Givanni

In 2008, the Museum of Modern Art (MoMa) approached Tim Burton about exhibiting a retrospective of his artwork. The venerable New York institution spent the best part of two years unearthing the director’s distinctive gothic-flavoured drawings, ultimately putting on an exhibition that included 500 drawings, paintings, photographs, sketchbooks, moving-image works and sculptural installations.
Screen scenes, revisited

Apr 17, 2023 | bfi.org.uk | June Givanni

Hailed by many as the renaissance era that birthed a prolific new wave of Black cinematic content, symbolically, the early 1990s also ushered in groundbreaking cultural expansions in film exhibition and saw the dawn of Europe’s first Black-helmed film venues. The Black Film Bulletin’s first editions launched in the Spring of 1993 – its emergence from the BFI’s former African Caribbean Unit undoubtedly inspired by the zeitgeist.