Judge Peter Herbert, who took the Ministry of Justice to court for race discrimination in 2021 and won, will give a talk on 60 years since the first Race Relations Act of 1965. He will also detail how the 2010 Equality Act applies to the British Film Institute with regard to their refusal to do a Race Equality Impact Assessment as required by the Public Sector Equality Duty and supported by 17,277 petitioners.  

The BFI People department headed by Vilma Nikolaidou states it does not need to do a REIA based on the anonymous and undated opinion of an ‘external consultant’ who remains a mystery after an entire year of asking. A REIA was requested by the African Odysseys Steering Committee in June 2024.  The talk is listed HERE

In addition to Judge Herbert’s presentation, Professor Gus John will be hosting a film on his 60 years of anti-racist activism HERE, which packed out the BFI 450-seater in 2015 as part of African Odysseys.  He will also discuss how BFI CEO Roberts refused to meet him in October 2024 after the Professor wrote a nine-page letter about Black history, film and race equality in support of African Odysseys HERE.  Roberts refused to meet the Professor in the same month he had to apologise to Faisal Querishi for badly handling his race complaint.HERE

For context, Professor John helped the Blair government write the race equality laws and trains large institutions like universities, as to how to run REIAs.

Professor John will also discuss  how the all-white senior management team of Stuart Brown Head of Programme and Acquisitions and Jason Wood, Executive Director of Public Programmes and Audiences cancelled a meeting with him to discuss the petition, two hours before it was due to start on 17th January 2025.HERE

On the 20th of September, Professor Lez Henry, whose 2010 film ‘Resisting the System’ also packed out the BFI 450 seater, will give a talk on Black British Civil Rights and anti-racist Kung Fu street fighters. HERE He will also reference grassroots filmmaking and global majority history as his film premiered  and sold  out at BFI because of African Odysseys.

Professor Patrick Vernon, on the 7th of November, will deliver a film and talk on Black soldiers, World Wars and UK civil rights HERE. Professor Vernon is probably best known for helping expose the Windrush Scandal, getting Prime Minster Teresa May to set up Windrush Day, and making Mary Seacole the number one Great Black Briton. He will also discuss racism at the BFI as he was one of many Black filmmakers that African Odysseys platformed there.

The above filmmakers and many, many more, were systemically ignored by the BFI’s magazine Sight and Sound despite continuous and numerous complaints to Ben Roberts, Stuart Brown and Jason Wood since June 2020. African Odysseys has never had a feature article on any of the amazing Black films and filmmakers platformed to sold out audiences over 17 years. HERE

African Odysseys had planned for a season of events at the BFI to recognise the 60-year anniversary of the 1965 Race Relations Act, but BFI management made that impossible by:

A Ignoring the advice of the all-volunteer Steering Committee who successfully programmed film events for 17 years bringing a massively underserved Black audience to the venue and providing £6 million pounds of free labour

B Refusing to communicate with the Steering Committee for three months as ordered by Stuart Brown

C Removing African Odysseys co-founder David Somerset, the only person with 17 years’ experience of Black film at the BFI, who created and maintained the programme without consulting the public.

D Deleting the 48-week job role that made African Odysseys possible since 2007

BFI CEO Ben Roberts, and Chair of Governors Jay Hunt were informed that such actions would be catastrophic to African Odysseys and the Black community, numerous times, in writing, since June 2024.  The situation was publicly announced as seen in this newsletter HERE and in the 17 petition updates.

The BFI were repeatedly asked how African Odysseys would continue without the co-founder and job role. They had no answer. 

The BFI works at least six months in advance, therefore, as far back as October 2024 they already knew for certain that there would be no African Odysseys events past 31st January 2025 which was when they removed David Somerset. This contradicts what Ben Roberts said about the programme being ‘on pause’ in this Screen Daily article in March 2025 HERE. His comment 'We have not yet been able to agree on a shared approach to managing it [with the programme’s steering group],”  makes no sense, as it was the BFI that refused to communicate with the Steering Committee for three months, then said they could only spare one hour to meet, then cancelled the meeting two hours before it was due to start and refused to answer eight simple questions like 'what is the budget for African Odysseys ?' for more than a year. None of that is mentioned.

African Odysseys continues to screen educational, anti-racist films from the African Diaspora all over London using community resources.

The fact that the BFI is presently advertising an event with the phrase ‘explores whether protest movements influence social change’ is bizarre considering the 17,277 online protestors and the BFIs lack of change since George Floyd in 2020 as detailed HERE

Please continue to sign and share the petition and attend the events above.