To mark Islington’s usual Black History Month celebrations and to launch our new All World History, All Year Round programme, Every Voice is excited to co-host, with King’s Place, a screening of this award-winning film by Joanna Lipper. Joanna is an award-winning filmmaker, photographer and author.  As a Lecturer at Harvard, she has been teaching Using Film For Social Change in the Department of African and African-American Studies (2010-2015).  She also runs Vertumnus Productions, an international company dedicated to the development and production of narrative and documentary films centred on strong, complex women characters of depth and substance.  

In 1993 Nigeria elected M.K.O. Abiola as president in a historic democratic vote that promised to end years of military dictatorship. Shortly after the election, Abiola’s victory was annulled and he was arrested.  During his incarceration, Abiola’s wife, Kudirat, took over the leadership of the pro-democracy movement, organising strikes and marches and winning international attention for the Nigerian struggle and was consequently assassinated.   The Supreme Price tells this deeply moving story through the eyes of M.K.O and Kudirat Abiola’s eldest daughter, Hafsat Abiola, who was about to graduate from Harvard when her mother was murdered. Her father died in prison two years later under mysterious circumstances. Determined not to let her parents’ democratic ideals die, Hafsat returns to Nigeria after years in exile and is at the forefront of a progressive movement to empower women and dismantle the patriarchal structure of Nigerian society. 

The film will be followed by a Q&A with Joanna and Lela Kogbara, the Vice Chief Executive of Islington Council and daughter of Nigerian refugees, who has been one of the key leaders in the move towards the All World History, All Year Round initiative in Islington.

Tickets can be booked here