BFMAF’s Essential Cinema programme is a pluralist retrospective series, proposing revisions and additions to what might be considered canonical cinema. With a non-fiction focus, this year’s Essential Cinema brings together histories born at the borders of nations and across intersections of identity.

The Essential Cinema programme presents Shari Frilot’s seminal Black Nations/Queer Nations? (USA, 1995). Archived by Third World Newsreel, this experimental documentary emerged from the first conference of CLAGS: The Center for LGBTQ Studies, the first university-based centre for LGBTQ research. In powerfully addressing the critical intersection of queerness and the African diaspora, the film explores the profound questions and challenges faced by individuals who are both queer and part of the African diaspora.

This screening will be followed by a Q&A with Trini-Irish anti-disciplinary practitioner based in Dublin, Clodagh Assata Boyce. Clodagh’s practice is concerned with interdependence as a strategy of resistance and is influenced by the radical traditions of Black feminist thought.

We are grateful to present Be Yersel! (Almost Ma Sel Again), the exclusive work-in-progress preview of Be Yersel! (The Legend o’ Jesse Rae) (Marco J Federici, Scottish Borders/UK, 2026) – a joyous tribute to the outstanding career of Jesse Rae. Best known for writing the 1982 song Inside Out by the band Odyssey, Jesse Rae plugged into the electric current of Parliament-Funkadelic, bringing 80s NYC to a standstill all the way from the Scottish Borders.

This screening will be followed by a Q&A with director Marco J Federici and Jesse Rae.