The Nine Muses

A film by John Akomfrah

The Nine Muses


Many recordings from Naxos AudioBooks – Anton Lesser reading from Homer’s The Odyssey, Milton’s Paradise Lost, Heathcote Williams reading from Dante’s Inferno, Sean Barrett reading from Beckett’s The Unnamable and many, many others – are featured in the extraordinary film The Nine Muses, which opens at the ICA, London on 20 January and runs for two weeks.

This magical film, directed by John Akomfrah, looks back to the immigration into the UK of peoples mainly from Africa, the Indian sub-continent and the Caribbean in the 1950s. They arrived full of hope for a new life with work and housing and a future, but encountered cold, suspicion and defensiveness.

Akomfrah interveaves black and white news footage of the period with stark, white, freezing Alaskan landscape – powerful images underpinned by quotations of travel, apprehension, vision, despair, loss and optimism from the Naxos AudioBooks catalogue.

An unusual and unforgettable experience.

For full details of screenings, including a Special Preview and Director Q&A, and to book tickets, see the ICA website.

See a short excerpt from the film – featuring some Naxos AudioBooks recordings – below:

VIDEO

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