Migration Matters Festival Short Film Night

About the show

Discover new stories and experience boundary-pushing films.

Our short film night explores what it means to keep our connections to culture alive, uncovers the resilience and sacrifice behind a family’s corner shop, and paints a vibrant portrait of dub poet activist Linton Kwesi Johnson.

Dread Beat & Blood

This vibrant portrait of dub poet and political activist Linton Kwesi Johnson transports us back to the turbulent streets of Brixton in the late 1970s. Jamaican-born Johnson explains with precise and powerful eloquence the violence and racism meted out to Black and Asian communities in London and beyond - and how his poetry acts as a weapon in the struggle for justice.

Dread Beat and Blood, funded by the Arts Council, takes its title from Johnson's 1975 book of poetry and seminal 1978 album, recorded under the moniker Poet and the Roots. Director Franco Rossi revisited South London's sound system culture in his 1980 feature film debut, Babylon.

• Film Length: 45 minutes


• Director: Franco Rosso

Shop Dada - The Cornershop That Built Us (Short Documentary Screening)

Shop Dada - The Cornershop That Built Us follows filmmaker Darshan Gajjar as he retraces the journey of his grandfather, Pravin Mistry, who fled Uganda and rebuilt his life running corner shops in Britain. Revisiting his grandfather’s home videos, Darshan returns to the first shop decades later, uncovering the sacrifice and resilience hidden behind a familiar South Asian stereotype. As past and present collide, we are confronted with the prejudice that shaped one generation and asks to consider why those same tensions are resurfacing in Britain today.

• Film Length: 22 minutes


• Created by Darshan Gajjar

HAYAT

Rahma, an Eritrean migrant in Australia, encounters difficulties and isolation as she works to keep her four young children connected to their culture.

• Film Length: 14 minutes


• Director: Rendah Haj