The Stuart Hall Project

Stuart Hall (1932-) is widely regarded as one of the leading lights of the British New Left movement, as well as helping to establish the discipline of cultural studies. Through a montage of television and radio appearances, intercut with news footage, director John Akomfrah offers a convincing account of Hall's life. The film is particularly strong when it focuses on Hall's origins in Jamaica, his polyglot background, and his first experiences of living and studying in England. The experience helped him understand the complexities of identity; there was no single construction of "Britishness" or "blackness" that he could use as a yardstick to define himself. Rather he came to realize that identities differ from person to person, and context to context. Akomfrah's film also chronicles Hall's involvement with the New Left Movement; his contribution to the New Left Review, his involvement in the Aldermaston marches of 1958, and his work on behalf of CND. While Hall's major mentors were E. P. Thompson and Raymond Williams, he understood that he could never really identify with them, on account of his different socio-cultural background. What is missing from the film, however, is an explanation of what "cultural studies" actually is, how it differs from other disciplines, and what Hall's contribution was to the development of the discipline. We understand something of its preoccupations with race, class and (latterly) gender, but we do not really find out anything about its interdisciplinarity; how it draws on insights from sociology, anthropology and literature, and tries to synthesize them into a perpetually shifting whole. The film's historical sense also tends towards the sketchy; some of the visual images Akomfrah uses (e.g. the footage from the Chile revolutions of the Seventies) appear to have little relevance to Hall's theoretical and/or cultural concerns. Nonetheless THE STUART HALL PROJECT is an intensely valuable text, providing a record of Hall's work over the last half- century.

Interesting, if slow building, documentary on Stuart Hall, one of England's leading leftist thinkers of the last 40 years.

The film eschews some of the usual tropes of bio-docs, using no new talking heads interviews, but only clips from Hall's various TV and radio appearances over the years, along with old film clips of the eras being discussed, close shots of magazines, and some very poetic (I assume) newly shot footage of skylines and people. The music is mostly Miles Davis, who is Hall's favorite musician, although it really adds more emotion to the film when later on Akomfrah switches tactics and uses more music by a film composer and others as well, including Brian Eno.

For those of us who know little about Hall, the film can be frustrating for a while, because it recounts a lot of biographical details without getting into exactly what it is that Hall espouses or believes, or why he was/is so important to the left or UK culture. But over time the film starts to dig deeper, and it's hard not to be struck by Hall's thoughtful, powerful but non- didactic views. After listening to screaming partisan talking heads on American television it's wonderful to listen to someone who injects such civility and thoughtfulness into presenting his views, and never seems to resort to simplistic answers or blame. He also acknowledges and embraces how his views and perceptions have continued to evolve over the decades as the world around him continues to change. Would that we had more such people speaking on both sides of the political spectrum.