 So David, Llywodraeth, Llywodraeth a Llywodraeth. Jun Javani is one of the world's leading film curators, with a career spanning more than three decades across five continents, and with specialisms in African and African diasporous cinema, black cinema and Caribbean cinema. Born in British Guyana, June grew up and was educated here in the United Kingdom, and her contribution to the diversification of film culture in this country and across the world is unparalleled. As June has said of her earliest motivations, I'd like to quote her here, I started with the desire to address the misrepresentation of black people, which individual media can be so powerful and often gets things so wrong. June became involved in cultural activism as early as the 1970s. In the 1980s she worked with a range of different organisations, including the Greater London Council, to create space for the celebration of cinema from the third world and by people of colour. It was a time when such institutions were helping to create funding for and to inspire a golden age of black film collectives in the UK, such as Sankofa and film festivals such as Third Eye, which challenged dominant media representations and brought the complexity and beauty of third cinema and black stories to British screens. From 1989 to 1996, June worked at the British Film Institute, where she also set up and managed the African-Caribbean Unit and founded the Black Film Bulletin. Vital to June's work has been valorising film as a visual and aesthetic medium, while also recognising the way that film plays a significant role in broader socio-political and historical movements. For those of us who work in African cinema, June's reputation always precedes her, and she has left many a young researcher and filmmaker starstruck. Her iconic edited collection, Symbolic Narratives African Cinema, was constantly by my side while I was doing my PhD, and I remember clearly the first time I saw June in person, giving an inspirational introduction to the father of African cinema, Usman Sen Ben at the Barbican in 2005. June is nothing short of a celebrity at film festivals and events across Africa, where she can regularly be seen curating film programmes or heading juries from the foundational Fespaco Film Festival in Burkina Faso to the African Movie Academy Awards in Nigeria to the Colours of the Nile Film Festival in Ethiopia. June was also the curator of the Planet Africa programme at the prestigious Toronto International Film Festival for five years. The French film critic Serge Dainy like to say, the curator is the one who sets up the goal so that the filmmaker can score. Curation is often difficult, painstaking work, and the curator frequently remains behind the scenes, helping others to achieve their dreams. The word curator comes from the Latin curate, to careful. June has cared for and contributed so much to the work and careers of so many filmmakers from pioneering figures such as Martin Eakin filmmaker Eusen Palsy and Senegalese filmmaker Dribbledio Mambiti to young talents who have been the beneficiaries of the funding and development programmes that June has worked for. We are all exceptionally fortunate that June has recently made her astounding knowledge and unique personal archive publicly available through her June Giovanni Pan-African Cinema archive, a collection that brings together her life's work with the stories of the many filmmakers she has worked with across the past 40 years. It is no exaggeration to call June one of the pioneers and mothers of African and black cinema, a curator who has nurtured filmmakers and who has revolutionised the images and representations that we see on our cinema and television screens. So David, it is my privilege now to present to you June Giovanni for the award of honorary doctorate and I invite her to address this assembly. First of all I must thank Linda Way for her very generous citation and so us for this significant award. It's an honour and I'm very humbled to receive this award. I've been surrounded from the beginning of my career by people who are passionate about life, about humanity and spirituality and about the world we live in. These are the things that have inspired me and if I could do the same for others then I will be fulfilled. I started with a desire to address misrepresentation as Linda Way has said of black people in the world, a world I experienced in the mid-1950s when I came to England as a child from the Caribbean. It amazed me that so little was known about or expected of black people so that by the time I reached higher education it became a priority to address this misrepresentation of the histories and cultures of African diaspora people and people of colour. In this respect cinema and the visual media are extremely powerful tools and I was convinced that if people were able to see the world through the work of writers, filmmakers and artists and celebrate what African and African diaspora cinema had to offer we would all be greatly enriched. When I became active in cinema in the early 80s, around 1982 there was still an absence of black people in the field. Third cinema emanating from Africa, Asia, Latin America, the Caribbean and African America represented new ways not just of telling stories in cinema but also demonstrated how the medium could challenge orthodox practices and master the technology in the service of history and humanity in all of its glory. This cinema placed humanity at the centre of the cinematic agenda and challenged the power that laid behind the structures, the cannons and the dominant technologies of the industry. This was exciting. The power of cinema to conceal and to reveal were too important for people of colour not to master it or their contribution undervalued. So one of the early interventions I made was to produce with the British Film Institute two catalogue editions listing all of the black films internationally that were available here in the UK to encourage other curators who didn't know about this work to actually seek it out to find it and to use it. Valuing is the heart of my passion. I value not only the films but also the historic moments that mark the development of this cinema. All we can do is value things that we feel are deserving. History will do the rest. I began collecting materials, films, images, posters, scripts simply to help my work as a curator a couple of decades down the line and a big physical collection later. This is pre-digital of course. They have become the currency. This growing archive began to feel historically urgent. I was surrounded by generations of people who did not know these filmmakers nor had they seen the films. Work that is a valuable witness to black history and culture. I was convinced that subsequent generations can use this material to explore, celebrate and challenge history to better understand and make sense of the world today. Better still to build their own expressions of the contemporary recognising the value of the past. In the words of one of my dear friends and respected colleagues the filmmaker Raoul Peck, the work is witness to what he describes using the past to speak to the present. This was why I felt it was important to establish the June Giovanni Pan-African Cinema Archive and begin to build the possibility for curators, filmmakers, artists, historians and others to have access to the collection of films, audio, photographic and other artistic and paper based materials. For a number of reasons working as an independent organisation in the field of archiving has been uniquely challenging, particularly without funding or support that such institutions usually have access to. At this juncture in my life and career I realise what is most important are the underlying values and passions that sustain me especially when working in a field where challenges are fierce and the material rewards often few. My confidence and my deep belief in humanity is grounded in my faith. It has to sustain me, surrounded me with great people and given me a sense of purpose. This is a significant foundation for whatever we want to do in life. An award like this provides much needed encouragement and I will endeavour to use this great privilege to take the work of the archive further, not only for the filmmakers and artists whose work I greatly value but also for the young and the old generally who deserve the opportunity of knowing and experiencing a rich cultural heritage. I thank the filmmakers and colleagues here and around the world whose generosity has permitted me to do the work that I do and many of whose work is in the archive and to whom I am eternally grateful. Finally, my mum was born a hundred years ago like Nelson Mandela, one of her heroes. Unfortunately, she died nine years ago, two days before Michael Jackson whose music and artistry brought her great joy. But had she been here to witness this occasion she would have been enormously proud just as she was for my sister, for her grandchildren and great-grandchildren. I thank them all for their support including my son Jan, my granddaughter Viva and all the other family members and close friends and colleagues who have been here to support me this week. I thank you all.