SEVEN SONGS FOR MALCOLM X is a British documentary film about the life of Malcolm X, the influential civil rights activist who was assassinated in 1965.

An homage to the inspirational African-American civil rights leader, SEVEN SONGS FOR MALCOLM X collects testimonies, eyewitness accounts, and dramatic reenactments to tell the life, legacy, loves, and losses of Malcolm X.

Featuring interviews with Malcolm's widow Betty Shabazz, Spike Lee, and many others, SEVEN SONGS looks for the meaning behind the resurgence of interest in the man whose X always stood for the unknown.

"What makes Seven Songs so provocative is that Akomfrah shows respect for many different interpretations of Malcolm, suggesting that this revolutionary figure belongs to everybody."—The Chicago Reader

"[SEVEN SONGS FOR MALCOLM X] combines riveting footage of the man himself, extracts from his writing, recollections of his family, friends and fellow activists, with [brief] staged tableaux. It's all here: Malcolm X's charisma, the struggle to clarify his beliefs, and the context in which they evolved... an engrossing portrait."—Geoff Ellis, Time Out (London)

Best Feature Length Documentary, 1994 Image D'Ailleurs (Paris)

Certificate of Merit, 1994 San Francisco Film Festival

Best Historical Documentary & Audience Special Merit Awards Winner, 1993 National Black Programming Consortium

Best Use of Archival Footage in a Documentary, 1993 Chicago Film Festival

Note about the Director, John Akomfrah:

Born in Accra, Ghana, in 1957, to radical political activist parents, John Akomfrah was widely recognized as one of the most influential figures of black British culture in the 1980s. An artist, lecturer, and writer as well as a filmmaker, his twenty-year body of work is among the most distinctive in the contemporary British art world, and his cultural influence continues today.

As a teen, Akomfrah was a Super 8 filmmaker and enthusiast. With several underground cine-clubs in London, he helped bring Asian and European arthouse cinema, militant cinema from Africa and Latin America, and American independent and avant-garde cinema to minority audiences.

In 1982, Akomfrah helped found the seminal, cine-cultural workshop the Black Audio Film Collective. He directed a broad range of work for the group, including fiction films, tape slides, single screen gallery pieces, experimental videos, music videos, and documentaries.

Since 1987, Akomfrah's work has been shown in galleries including Documenta (Germany), the De Balie (Holland), Centre George Pompidou (France), the Serpentine and Whitechapel Galleries (UK); and The Museum of Modern Art (USA). A major new retrospective of Akomfrah's gallery-based work with the Black Audio Film Collective premiered at the FACT and Arnolfini galleries (UK), and is now making a tour of galleries and museums throughout Europe. In 2000, Akomfrah was awarded the Gold Digital Award at the Cheonju International Film Festival, South Korea, for his innovative use of digital technology.