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City of London

Rivers, Routes, Remembering

Sunday 30th August 2026

Presented as part of the Barbican’s landmark Project a Black Planet film season, Rivers, Routes, Remembering brings together four powerful films that explore water as a witness to history, a keeper of memory and a vital thread connecting Africa, the Caribbean and the wider Black Atlantic. Through documentary, experimental cinema and contemporary moving-image practice, the programme invites audiences to consider how rivers, oceans and coastlines carry stories of migration, survival, resistance and belonging across generations.

 

The afternoon features De bateyes (1971) by pioneering Cuban filmmaker Sara Gómez, an intimate portrait of life in Caribbean sugar-producing communities that examines labour, identity and everyday resilience. It is shown alongside Path to the Stars (2022) by Portuguese-Angolan artist Mónica de Miranda, whose visually striking work reflects on migration, landscape and memory, exploring the emotional and historical ties that connect people to place.

Also included is What Sound Does the Black Atlantic Make? (2019) by Barbadian-Scottish artist Alberta Whittle, an evocative film that listens to the Atlantic Ocean as a site of remembrance, healing and ancestral connection. Completing the programme is a river holds a perfect memory (2025) by Hope Strickland, which combines archival material with contemporary imaging technologies to examine how rivers preserve histories that are often overlooked or forgotten. Together, the films reveal water not simply as a landscape, but as an archive through which memories, cultures and histories continue to flow across continents.

Rather than presenting history as something fixed, Rivers, Routes, Remembering encourages audiences to think about memory as fluid and continually evolving. The programme explores how waterways have shaped journeys of migration, trade, displacement and cultural exchange throughout the history of the Black Atlantic, while also serving as places of mourning, survival and renewal. Through poetic storytelling and visually rich filmmaking, each work offers a different perspective on the enduring connections between people, place and collective memory.

The screening forms part of the Barbican’s ambitious Project a Black Planet season, which features more than fifty events inspired by the history and continuing influence of Pan-Africanism. Alongside exhibitions, talks, music and performances, the cinema programme demonstrates how film has become a powerful medium for exploring Black histories, challenging dominant narratives and imagining new futures. Rivers, Routes, Remembering offers audiences a thoughtful and moving exploration of identity, migration and remembrance through the lens of contemporary and archival cinema.

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