The BFI National Archive has announced that Ahmed Alauddin Jamal’s Hotel London will receive a 4K remaster and world premiere at this year’s London Film Festival.
The film will screen on 16 October, with Jamal himself in attendance, and is part of a wider BFI National Archive remasters project in recognition of the cultural and political significance of the Black and South Asian British Workshop movement.
This includes Retake Film and Video Collective, co-founded by Jamal, which was actively producing collaborative independent filmmaking throughout the 1980s and 1990s.
In a press release, the BFI said: “Known for their issue-driven films working across drama, documentary and experimental modes, these collective groups made urgent, searching films about the multiplicity of the Black and South Asian experience in the UK.
“The workshops successfully developed partnerships with funding bodies such as the BFI, Arts Council, local authorities, voluntary organisations and the newly established television broadcaster Channel Four.
“The fertile Workshops era was instrumental in bringing Black and South Asian British stories to wider public audiences through the medium of film and television, at a time when there was little media representation and often only in stereotypes.
“This wider representation was also reflected behind the camera, nurturing a network of emerging Black and South Asian British creative talent including Ahmed Alauddin Jamal, John Akomfrah, Maureen Blackwood, Isaac Julien, Menelik Shabazz and D. Elmina Davis.”
Underpinning Hotel London’s premiere at the London Film Festival is the BFI National Archive’s plan to remaster the breadth of the workshop canon, including films made by Retake, Sankofa, the Black Audio Film Collective, Ceddo and Birmingham Film and Video Workshop, amongst others, with 14 remasters already under way.
The film is the second title in this project to premiere at the BFI London Film Festival. The 4K remaster of The Passion of Remembrance, Sankofa’s debut co-directed by Maureen Blackwood and Isaac Julien, previously premiered at the BFI London Film Festival and New York Film Festival in 2022.
Hotel London follows a Bangladeshi family confronted by the harsh realities of temporary unstable housing in London, in a drama that blends fiction with video activism.
It has been newly remastered in 4K from the 16mm original negative A & B rolls and 16mm sound negative preserved by the BFI National Archive. 4K scanning and picture remastering was provided by Silver Salt Restoration, with sound scanned and remastered by the BFI National Archive.
More information on the full London Film Festival programme is available now.
