Donald Rodney: Three Songs On Pain, Time and Light

To mark the culmination of our three year Expanding The Frame initiative to increase accessibility in the MAC Cinema programme, we will be premiering brand new audio description and creative caption tracks for the acclaimed Donald Rodney short Three Songs On Pain, Time and Light.

Made by Trevor Mathison and Edward George and produced with Black Audio Film Collective, Three Songs On Pain, Time and Light documents the life and work of Donald Rodney (1961-1998), a Black British disabled artist with Jamaican heritage, who grew up in Smethwick on the outskirts of Birmingham. He lived with Sickle Cell Anaemia and interrogated racism, masculinity and disability in his art. He passed away at the age of 37.

The new accessibility tracks have been created through a series of workshops with visually impaired audience members who regularly attend accessible screenings at MAC, led by associate programmer Elaine Lillian Punia-Joseph. Elaine is an Afro-Caribbean audio describer from Birmingham and the Creative Lead at SoundScribe, a global majority collective of audio describers and blind or partially sighted consultants.

The film will be presented with a new creative caption track by disabled-led collective Carefuffle, a new audio description track by SoundScribe and a Q&A with key contributors to the project, including artist Beverley Bennett.