Listening All Night To The Rain is testament to Akomfrah’s long standing motivations in addressing landmark moments in British history with a rigorous critical lens.
Key archival imagery repositions narratives from the Windrush generation, a symbol of mass migration and the diaspora in Britain more broadly.
Akomfrah focuses largely on the lives of the women and children of Windrush, paying respect to the breadth of black British identity.
He also sheds light on the discrimination that migrants to Britain faced in the context of the post-industrial decline of the country from the late 1960s onwards. For example with another central figure, British-Nigerian David Oluwale (1930-1969), who tragically drowned in the River Aire, Yorkshire after being brutalised by local policemen.