June Ingrid Givanni was born in Georgetown, Guyana, and grew up in the UK. She was co-ordinator of the Greater London Council’s Third Eye Film Festival in 1983, and during the 1980s was active in working for the creation of specialist distribution circuits for the work of black and Third World filmmakers. She created and was responsible for managing the African Caribbean Unit at the British Film Institute, and compiled the first comprehensive directory of black and Asian films in the UK, as well as starting, with Gaylene Gould, the BFI’s Black Film Bulletin (1993–96). Givanni has worked with various international film festivals, guest-curating African and African diaspora films eg at the Sao Paulo Short Film Festival, Brazil, the Kerala International Film Festival, India, Images Caraibes, Martinique and Creteil Film Festival, Paris. Givanni has served on film juries at African film festivals such as FESPACO (from 1985), Zanzibar Festival of the Dhow Countries, the All Africa Film Awards in South Africa and others. Her publications include the edited volumes Remote Control: Dilemmas of Black Intervention in British Film and TV (1996) and Symbolic Narratives/African Cinema: Audiences, Theory and the Moving Image (2001). She runs the June Givanni Pan African Cinema Archive (JGPACA) in London, a personal collection of films, ephemera, manuscripts, publications, audio, photography, posters documenting pan-African cinema. In 2018 she was awarded an honorary doctorate by SOAS, University of London. 

June’s pioneering work and continued commitment to ensure that her film archives get out into the wider world are a real example of how to make women’s work visible.

Sharmilla Beezmohun

Read more: http://www.junegivannifilmarchive.com/