Boy with flag and Black British experience in Akomfrah's Handsworth songs and McQueen's Red, white and blue

This short article considers the parallels and contrasts evident across remediations of Vanley Burke’s photograph Boy with Flag, Winford in Handsworth Park, 1970 in films by two of the most important figures in British cinema of the past 35 years. Handsworth Songs, directed by John Akomfrah of the Black Audio Film Collective, was first broadcast on Channel Four in 1986, and Red, White and Blue, directed by Steve McQueen, was released as part of the Small Axe series on BBC1 2020. What are the implications of these two deployments of Burke’s image, and what do they tell us about the aesthetic and political strategies of Akomfrah and McQueen, and their distinct engagements with black British experience?