June Givanni Pan-African Cinema Archive Traineeship: Reflections
At the start of this year we teamed up with the June Givanni PanAfrican Cinema Archive (JGPACA) to deliver an 8-week traineeship in Pan-African Film and Archive Curation. The programme culminated with an event as part of the 20th Flatpack Festival, a Pan-African film programme exploring journeys and dreaming, complete with food, discussion and a buzzing, beautiful atmosphere. Here, JGPACA trainee Denise Amory-Reid reflects on the experience.
Taking part in the JGPACA traineeship has been inspiring and genuinely eye-opening for all three of us, myself, Janet and Rene. What started as a chance to learn more about Pan-African cinema and archive quickly became a journey into memory, storytelling, friendship, identity, and the importance of protecting Black cultural history.
Throughout the programme, we visited important cultural spaces, including Birmingham Museum Trust's Museum Collection Centre, the Stuart Hall Archive, and the June Givanni Pan-African Cinema Archive in London. Each visit encouraged us to reflect more deeply on what archive really means. Archives are proof that we were here, reflecting the lives, creativity, and contributions of the people who came before us, kept alive for the generations that follow.
At Birmingham Museum, we were shown old accession registers, huge handwritten books used to record items entering the museum's collection over many decades, dating back to the early 1900s. It was fascinating, but also revealed how complicated archive work can be. Some entries were vague and described possessions as simply “20 necklaces” or “20 shoes from Africa,” with little detail, unclear origins, or outdated language attached to them.
Our conversations with the Senior Curator around restitution and repatriation were especially thought-provoking. We discussed the importance of museums building honest relationships with the communities that objects, possessions, and artworks originally came from. We explored the idea that while museums may hold these items, the deeper knowledge, memory, and meaning connected to them often remain within those communities.
The traineeship also brought us closer to the work of Stuart Hall, whose writing explores race, identity, media, and the experiences of Black communities in Britain. Our visit to the Stuart Hall Archive at Birmingham University gave us something beyond his academic work. Reading his personal letters, newspaper cuttings, and magazines highlighted his genuine love and appreciation for Black music, film, and art, and introduced us to the creative spirit that ran throughout his thinking.
Janet, Rene and I spent a lot of time searching for rare films, watching and discussing them together as a group. This encouraged us to think more deeply about politics, representation, and the stories being told beneath the surface. It has been a truly joyful experience. Juwairiyyah from Flatpack was a wonderful facilitator, creating a warm, thoughtful and supportive space for us to learn, reflect, and grow together throughout the traineeship.
For me personally, the traineeship drew me even closer to stewarding my own fathers archive, a video collection he spend decades building, documenting Birmingham’s Black cultural life from the early 70s onwards. It was wonderful to meet June Givanni and her team in London, where we were introduced to her extensive archive and original Pan-African Film and Television Festival of Ouagadougou (FESPACO) film programme materials. One of the programmes was designed as a passport, with film information and festival listings inside. I immediately connected with it because I have my father’s actual passport from when he was fifteen years old. On the front it reads: “Colony of St Christopher, Nevis and Anguilla”- wording that speaks to the political history and colonial rule at that time. Having dad’s passport and thinking about the FESPACO programme reminded me how archives and cinema allow us to time travel through memory. I’d love to one day present dad’s archive in a similar way, echoing the JGPACA and honouring his journey.
I speak for all of us - myself, Janet and Rene - when I say that the JGPACA traineeship deepened our understanding of film, archive, and Black cultural history. Through visits, screenings, and conversations, we explored themes of joy, resistance, identity, migration, and representation, while building genuine friendships along the way. Most importantly, the experience reminded us that archives are more than records of the past, they are proof that people lived, created, travelled, celebrated, persevered, and left something meaningful behind for future generations to find.