Imruh Bakari

Imruh Bakari (Ishaq Imruh Bakari) is a film maker and writer born in 1950 on St Kitts, who is also referred to as Imruh Bakari Caesar or Imruh Caesar. He currently teaches Film Studies at the University of Winchester. He works in the UK and a number of African countries in the area of culture and the creative industries.

Film and TV work

Bakari worked in film and theatre projects in Bradford at the Art College and then attended the UK National Film and Television School. His graduation film was Riots and Rumours of Riots in 1981. This documented the history of immigration from the Caribbean to the UK from the Second World War until the 1958 Notting Hill riots. The film looked at that period against the background of the 1981 "riots" in the UK.

He worked with Menelik Shabazz on Step Forward Youth (1974), which documented the lives of black youth in Britain, and in 1982 on Burning an Illusion and the short Blood Ah Goh Run. Bakari formed Kuumba Productions with Menelik Shabazz and Henry Martin, and was a founder member of Ceddo Film and Video Workshop, an outlet for new young, primarily black, talent. He produced I Am Not Two Islands (1983) for Channel 4. He then made Street Warriors in 1985 and The Mark of the Hand in 1986 for the Arts Council of Great Britain on the work of Caribbean artist Aubrey Williams. In 1992 Bakari directed Blue Notes and Exiled Voices, about the experiences of exiled South African musicians during the apartheid era, featuring Hugh Masekela, The Brotherhood of Breath. Louis Moholo and Pinise Saul.

Between 1999 and 2004 Bakari was Festival Director for the Zanzibar International Film Festival. In Tanzania he co-founded the Tanzania Screenwriter's Forum and participated in the industry organisation, the Tanzania Independent Producers Association (TAIPA). Between 2005 and 2008 he produced in Tanzania the short film series African Tales. He was the producer of Mwalimu – The Legacy of Julius Kambarage Nyerere (Mnet, Great Africans Series, 2009).

Theatrical work

He has acted and directed in the theatre. During the 1970s he worked at the Keskidee Arts Centre, where his performances included the lead role in the first production of Alem Mezgebe’s Pulse in 1977, directed by Rufus Collins. In 1985 he worked on Compound Images, Coming Up for Air, and The Balmyard in 1986 with Don Kinch’s Staunch Poets and Players.

Writing

Bakari writes on African and Caribbean cinema and the creative industries. His articles have appeared in publications including the 1993 and 1994 Ecrans d'Afrique, Screen, Black Filmmaker and Black Film Bulletin. He is the joint editor, with Mbye Cham, of African Experiences of Cinema. In 1996 he wrote "Memory and Identity in Caribbean Cinema" for New Formations. He has also published two collections of poetry: Sounds & Echoes (Karnak House, 1981) and Secret Lives (Bogle-L'Ouverture Publications, 1986). He has performed his work on London's Southbank Centre.