June Givanni: Outstanding Contribution Award 2024

Words by Simran Hans

In a chilly office overlooking London’s historic Fleet Street, June Givanni removes a small brass bird from inside a wooden box. The bird’s head is turned, as though peering over its shoulder. The brooch was given to her as a gift by an artist, who crafted it after spending time in the June Givanni PanAfrican Cinema Archive while studying at Central Saint Martins. They had been inspired by a concept that the curator, programmer and 2024’s Outstanding Contribution to Cinema award recipient had taught them about.

Sankofa was the name of the pioneering film and video collective founded in 1983 by Black British artists Isaac Julien, Martina Attille, Maureen Blackwood, Nadine Marsh-Edwards and Robert Crusz. But sankofa is also “a philosophy,” says Givanni, originating from the Akan people of Ghana. “It’s about knowing the past to better guide your future, symbolised by a bird that’s looking back.”

Unearthing the PanAfrican Cinema Archive’s hidden threads

Givanni is the founder of the June Givanni PanAfrican Cinema Archive. An archive comprising of more than 10,000 items that tell the story of filmmaking across Africa and the diaspora on freestanding shelves stacked with carefully labelled boxes containing precious items.

The archive includes the original shooting script for Hyenas (1992), one of only two feature films made by Senegalese filmmaker Djibril Diop Mambéty. Plus rare copies of magazines that have ceased publication. Magazines like Ecrans d’Afrique and Black Film Bulletin, the latter of which Givanni started herself. A programme from the Third Eye Festival of World Cinema in London is further evidence that there has always been an audience for Black film. While a publication detailing independent films that emerged from the grant-aided, community led workshops commissioned by Channel Four in 1986 are a reminder that vital groundwork for present-day investment in Black talent was being laid decades ago.

Givanni has been doing this work – identifying, preserving, studying and celebrating Black filmmaking – for over 40 years. “It’s this network of knowledge that a curator can take to various places, that I think people are really appreciative of,” she says.

See who else received awards at the EE BAFTA Film Awards 2024.
For more inspiring stories from the world of film, games and TV explore our BAFTA Award Stories.