I became a filmmaker out of defiance, to put an end to that antiquated boilerplate, those old clichés according to which, in the France of the 1980s, the black African was just an extra or a silhouette, or at best played the roles of the grinning garbage man, the sly marabout with the bawdy laugh, the old rogue with the crestfallen mug; a void, therefore, in the films made by white people of questionable morals! And in a broader sense, over and above this sacrilege, I see it as my duty, without the least trace of megalomania, to add to this edifice that bears the name “cinema,” offering unparalleled works, anti-morose, which will undoubtedly take their place on the shelf of what is commonly known as the “World Cinema Patrimony,” making an Eiffel Tower of my minuscule person: a monument, in other words!

What challenges and opportunities will African cinema face in the coming
years?

From the local to the universal! To refuse any kind of complacency. To put out the utmost of original films without trying to please anyone.To pose thunderous subjects and jeer at the critiques, which come normally from finger-waggers and penny-ante specialists in black culture. The director from the Dark Continent has everything to gain by setting forth works that speak of the terroir; he will no longer be stymied with technical burdens, the heavy apparatus of 35mm, the astronomical budgets, the old song-and-dance about “bankable” actors.With his miniature digital toolbox, the opportunity is his for the taking, to invent, to flaunt assorted pompous dramaturgical rules, to show his ingenuity while respecting his three Elements: Time, Place, and Space. Then he can launch a singular stagecraft that grazes against the quintessential. Because it is the good fortune of the contemporary cineaste from the Dark Continent that our theatrics are still completely virgin, unknown, and underexploited, and ask only to be deflowered with poetry. For today is tomorrow already!

Excerpt from “Looking Back, Looking Forward: 20 Years of the New York African Film Festival” (2013).

The Indochina war, which ended in May 1954 with the battle of Dien Bien Phu, began to shake a colonial empire that had become visibly anachronistic. Many African soldiers fought against Nazism for the freedom of Europe and even alongside French troops in Indochina. They expected, in turn, a kind of recognition of their rights to freedom. African cinema has shown how, in response to these demands for justice, massacres were perpetrated in several African countries at that time: near Dakar in 1944 (Ousmane Sembén’s Camp Thiaroye); in Setif, Algeria, in 1945 (Rachid Bouchareb’s Outside the Law); and in Madagascar in 1947 (Raymond Rajaonarivelo’s Tabataba). According to Jeffrey James Byrne, “the impending decolonization of Africa was not obvious when the Algerian National Liberation Front, at the end of 1954, began its struggle: neither the speed  nor the form that would eventually define it—the universal institution of the sovereign state model—now seemed inevitable.” [^1]   Structurally, European colonialism was dying. But Byrne adds, “the specter of the Algerian conflict led British and French leaders to accelerate the  transition.” 

The United Nations declared 1960 the “year of Africa” and in December adopted Resolution 154 on decolonization, recommending that the Central African Republic be admitted as a member of the United Nations. The Algerian resistance, therefore, benefited from the support of the first African countries that achieved independence after Tunisia and Morocco. Presidents Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana, Sékou Touré of Guinea, and Modibo Keïta of Mali not only provided concrete assistance (including arms) to Algeria, but also allowed the Algerian National Liberation Front to open diplomatic missions in capitals at the risk of angering the French leaders of the time. It is worth noting that Frantz Fanon was ambassador to the Gouvernement Provisoire de la République Algérienne (GPRA) in Accra from March 1960. Beginning with its diplomatic missions, even though Algeria was not yet independent, the Algerian National Liberation Front at the end of 1960 provided weapons to liberation movements in Cameroon, in the “Belgian” Congo, in Mali, and according to Byrne, also to groups in Senegal.

Guerrillas from Angola and South Africa were also welcomed at this time in training camps in the Algerian Liberation Army located in Morocco. Activists of the African National Congress (ANC); the People’s Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA); the African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde (PAIGC), including the great leader Amilcar Cabral; the South West African People’s Organisation (SWAPO) from current day Namibia; and Samora Machel, who became president of Mozambique, among others, came to receive military training. During the war of Algerian independence, Nelson Mandela, for example, spent several days in Morocco with border army officers on a farm owned by the Bouabdallah family that was turned into a model barracks. Having become independent in 1962, Algeria maintained strong links with these liberation movements, many of which chose to locate their headquarters in Algiers. The ANC opened an information office in a large apartment in the center of Algiers. Up until 1991, the ANC president, Oliver Tambo, frequently visited the Algerian capital. This office was represented by figures such as Robert Reisha and the external relations representative of the ANC, Johnny Makatini. The former official in charge of liaising with liberation movements, Nelson Djelloul Melaïka, adds: Even the current President Zuma always repeats his commitment to Algeria. He never forgot that he once traveled with an Algerian passport! It was brave of Algeria to give a passport of a sovereign country to foreign militants who were trained by their enemies “outside the law”!

Recall that it was under the chairmanship of Algerian Foreign Minister Abdelaziz Bouteflika that the General Assembly of the United Nations in 1974 excluded South Africa. Algeria, according to Melaïka, “did not only support African movements, we helped the freedom fighters everywhere, without distinction, in their struggles against injustice.” It is amid this euphoric recovery of independence that Algeria became “a haven for soldiers and the world’s oppressed,” having hosted the first PanAfrican Cultural Festival in 1969. During this time, many countries were still under colonial domination. Cabral, the PAIGC leader, was one the major theorists of African liberation. During a press conference at Villa Boumaâraf, headquarters for the Algerian liberation movement, he stated: “Take note: Christians make pilgrimages to the Vatican, Muslims go to Mecca, and national liberation movements go to Algeria.” 

The performances in Algeria during July 1969 were often given by the Mozambique Liberation Front or PAIGC soldiers returned from the front. The Pan-African Cultural Festival (PANAF) was conceived as a continental celebration that would be opened up for the first time to the African diaspora living abroad, brought together in a militant cultural gathering strongly marked by the search for identity. William Klein’s film The Pan-African Festival of Algiers will endure as a living witnessing of the African and African American liberation movements taking place in Algeria during that time. We can watch Cabral (Guinea Bissau) and Agustinho Neto (MPLA, Angola) speak about the struggle against colonialism. Robert Mugabe, too, was present, along with the leading ANC members. When Algeria achieved its independence in 1962, the country soon pledged its support for the ANC. 

That same year, the newly elected president, Ahmed Ben Bella, invited Nelson Mandela to a military parade, where he offered financial support for the antiapartheid party. Algeria also renewed its military support, setting up training camps for ANC leaders on Algerian soil. South African filmmaker Ramadan Suleman dedicated his film By All Means Necessary to Algerian liberation movements taking place throughout the sixties. Klein’s film shows distressing images of Miriam Makeba, an antiapartheid icon for the ANC, as she appears repeatedly with Marion Williams, Makeba’s young child on his knee or the singer performing in front of a packed stadium, concealed beneath a lioness mask. Makeba was recently married to Stokely Carmichael when she came with him to Algiers. She obtained an Algerian passport to be able to move freely across international borders. For those who have seen the film, Archie Shepp will remain forever associated with his unbelievable improvisation with the Tuaregs of southern Algeria. Their outdoor performance in front of thousands of over-excited enthusiasts remains one of the pinnacles of African fraternity. It is mandatory viewing to watch Archie Shepp say, as he walks onstage, “We are still black and we have come back. Nous sommes revenus,” before adding, “Jazz is an African power. Jazz is an African music.” 

In its aesthetic approach, PANAF is tied to the political cinema from the late sixties with its handwritten subtitles, its quick intercuts, and its outraged denunciations of colonialism and segregation. Africa and Africans were dreaming of liberty and justice. We can hear “black is beautiful”  in the wings of the festival. PANAF was a succession of smiles, closed fists brandished in defiance of human injustice profoundly expressing the sense of “liberty” and resonating with people who had too long been deprived of it. Klein’s film serves as a testimony to this time, and few filmmakers could have captured and immortalized this tumultuous period with such strength and talent. The film takes its place in the already successful career of the filmmaker. Partly due to Klein, PANAF of ’69 has entered into humanity’s collective memory. 

Racial segregation had been abolished in the United States just scant months before PANAF, and Martin Luther King Jr. had been assassinated a year earlier. Frantz Fanon’s writings and his engagement in the struggle for independence made Algeria a powerful symbol for the fight against colonial and racial oppression, two concepts that are often conflated. African American diaspora gravitated en masse to Algeria, along with a significant contingency of Caribbeans and South Americans of African descent. This influx of revolutionaries of all stripes and all backgrounds quickly transformed this relaxed gathering into an unprecedented success in the Global South. PANAF occurred at the same historical moment as Woodstock and large social justice events in the United States. Following the example of other independence movements, the head of the Black Panthers, Eldridge Cleaver, sought refuge in Algeria. Rod Stewart was singing “Air Algiers,” and filmmakers were jostling around Algerian cinema to earn the label of “third world” or “nonaligned.” As Kathleen Neal Cleaver has pointed out, “It was the Organisation of African Unity, created in 1963, which, fueled by the move towards decolonization, entrusted Algeria with the task of organizing the first truly pan-African cultural festival . . . further increasing the significance of support for the fight against colonialism in Algeria.” 

During this period of decolonization and emancipation, the concept of Pan-Africanism, which sustained the dream of African unity, could only distinguish this dream from the repressive image of the Western world. Kathleen Cleaver writes that “although the members were exclusively black, the Black Panther Party insisted on ‘power to the people’ rather than ‘black power’ . . . and its presence in Algeria signified its identification with the struggle to end colonialism.” According to Cleaver, by officially inviting artists and politicians to participate in PANAF, Algeria implicitly recognized the “connection between African struggles and those of African Americans.” Not long before the festival, populist demonstrators had fired on and damaged the American Cultural Center in Algeria. Following his arrival in Algeria, Eldridge Cleaver proposed founding an African American Cultural Center. Doubtlessly influenced by William Klein’s film, French Algerian writer and scholar Olivier Hadouchi opposed the ’69 PANAF and the “world festival of black arts.” 

Even the title, Pan-African Cultural Festival, is a snub addressed to the World Festival of Black Arts, organized in 1966 by Senegal. At the end of the sixties, culture was seen more as an instrument of political engagement than as a distraction. In the revolutionary ardor of the neo-Marxist and decolonizing movements, it was good form to declare a commitment to anticolonialism and anti-imperialism. Senegalese film director Ousmane Sembène confirmed this during PANAF: “For me, the man of culture in Africa is a political man, with all that the term implies. He’s a man totally engaged in a perpetual denunciation. His role is to be a soldier, a fighter. Art can be a weapon. Really, all culture is political.” 

It is important here to recognize the division between “revolutionary” Africa and the version Négritude embodied by the president of Senegal, Léopold Sédar Senghor. It should be noted that another champion of Négritude and an avowed anticolonialist, Aimé Césaire (who was vice president of the 1966 World Festival for Black Arts in Dakar), was feted during the first PANAF. Relations between Algeria and Senegal were excellent. Senegal participated officially and extensively in the Algerian PANAF, represented by a strong delegation of artists and intellectuals. The delegation was present at the symposium on African culture and also at the conference for African filmmakers, organized by Algerian cinema leaders in the Ibn Khaldoun theater. Blaise Senghor participated alongside Senegalese filmmakers such as Ousmane Sembéne, Djibril Diop Mambéty, and Mahama  Johnson Traoré, as well as one of the founding fathers of African cinema, Paulin Soumanou Vieyra. I would even say that Négritude was present throughout the entire PANAF, demonstrated by the important presences of many African Americans such as Archie Shepp, Ted Joans, Nina Simone, Ed Bullins, Dr. Nathan Hare, Marion Williams, and Haki Madhubuti. All emphasized their African origins. It was during this initial Pan-African Cultural Festival that Nina Simone first sang her version of Jacques Brel’s “Ne me quitte pas” (“Don’t Leave Me”), and Makeba performed a song in Arabic, “Ana Horra fil el Djazaïr” (“I Am Free in Algiers”). 

At the risk of presenting a warped perspective, it should be noted that Klein’s film also inscribed Beninese philosopher Stanislas Spéro Adotévi’s virulent comments against Négritude. Supported by Congolese writer Henri Lopez, Adotévi published his authoritative work, Négritude et Négrologues, which he had begun before PANAF. At the end of the sixties, revolutionary Algeria was still influenced by Frantz Fanon’s writings, which were omnipresent throughout PANAF. Several years before, Algerian author Mouloud Mammeri had been inspired by Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth to write the commentary for the film, L’Aube des damnés, which Algerian film director and screenwriter Ahmed Rachedi had prepared for an Afro-Asian summit that had been delayed by Houari Boumédiène’s coup d’état in 1965. Fanon’s spirit appeared in 1969 as a link between the anticolonialist revolutionary dream and Négritude, which, according to Senghor, represented “all of black Africa’s cultural values.” 

In the introduction to Black Skin, White Masks, Fanon expressed his beliefs: “We’re trying to do nothing less than liberate men of color from themselves. We will make very slow progress, because there are two sides: the white and the black.” In spite of the richness of the performances offered by the African and African American artists, the symposium of the first Pan-African Cultural Festival, held in the framework of PANAF (Algiers, July 21 to August 1, 1969), represented without a doubt one of the strongest moments of this first intellectual confrontation between African thinkers on free African soil. Boumédiène stated at the festival’s opening that the event was “only one part of our immense efforts towards emancipation.” It may be difficult for some today to imagine Algeria as a suitable place to organize such an event, but anyone present during the sixties could see the impact that the long, eight-year war led by the Algerian people (at the cost of millions of victims) had on all African people enamored with the idea of freedom. As mentioned previously, the role played by Frantz Fanon as one of the spokespeople for the Algerian government in exile, followed by Nelson Mandela’s military training at the heart of the Algerian liberation army, caused the war for independence to resonate strongly for the whole continent. 

One of the first controversies to be raised during the symposium was the role of Western museums and their collection of works that belong to the African people’s heritage. Some participants called for the return of these works, while others warned that if these works were to be returned they would “disappear.” The question of museums dedicated to African art had already been raised in 1951 by the French anticolonial filmmakers Alain Resnais and Chris Marker in a documentary that attacked colonial culture at its very basis. Statues Also Die (Les statues meurent aussi) was screened in Africanist museums in Europe and offers a remarkable montage of archive documents concerning black Africa. The contention of the film is that the sculptures of black art in our museums are degrading because their meaning is becoming lost, while contemporary African art is “decadent,” corrupted by Western influences. The two directors raise the point that “black” art is housed in the anthropology museum, Musée de l’Homme, while Greek and Egyptian art resides in the Louvre, underscoring their denunciation of this colonial “ghettoization.” At the end of the day, the symposium strongly shaped the contours of the African dream of freedom that was both singular and rooted in universalism, posing essential questions that today might seem naive: How can culture contribute to the emancipation of African people from the colonial and imperial yoke? How can culture participate in African unity? What is the role of African culture in social, economic, and educational development? 

The final text adopted by PANAF, The Pan-African Cultural Manifesto, including the recommendations of the festival’s symposium, demonstrate that “beyond similarities and convergent forms of thought, beyond the common heritage, Africanity is also a shared destiny, the fraternity of the liberating struggle and a common future which should be assumed by all in order to master it.” For its intellectual debates and populist performances, le PANAF has remained the PANAF for the past forty years. Known for his work in photography, Klein quickly proved himself to be a politically engaged filmmaker. He had already forged strong friendships with African Americans following his film Muhammad Ali, The Greatest. He had gone on to film a section of the collectively filmed Far from Vietnam (organized by Chris Marker) alongside Jean-Luc Godard and Alain Resnais. In spite of that, the choice of Klein to direct the film was made shortly before the opening of the festival. 

The two main organizers of the project were the Algerian minister of information, Mohammed Seddik Benyahia, and his chief of staff, Mahieddine Moussaoui. The latter would be the decisive lynchpin at PANAF. At the beginning, Algerian cinema officials had proposed to entrust the making of the film to a collective composed of ten filmmakers, some whom were internationally renowned, including Klein and a number of other African filmmakers. Mohamed Slim Riad, Djibril Diop Mambéty, and Sarah Maldoror were suggested to lead the team. Each director would cover a different cultural sector. Industry leaders such as film director and screen writer Akira Kurosawa, documentary filmmaker Michel Brault, and filmmaker Gillo Pontecorvo agreed to the proposal. During a private planning meeting, however, Klein convinced Minister Benyahia to support him as the sole director. This decision did not go over well with the supporters of Algerian cinema, who had planned to involve all the veteran filmmakers who had engaged with the Algerian people during the war for independence. These filmmakers included René Vautier, Pierre Clément, Yann Le Masson, Pierre Lhomme, Bruno Muel, Antoine Bonfanti, and Jacqueline Meppiel. Except for Vautier, the majority of these talented experts eventually participated in the filming, collecting images for which they were solely responsible. It was also important to include Algerian filmmakers who had taken their first professional steps in the ranks of the resistance (Ahmed Lallem, Nasredine Guenifi), while Ahmed Rachidi led the national office of cinema from which the pioneer of combat filmmakers, Djamel Chaderli, had sprung. 

Ultimately, Klein was entrusted with the responsibility of centralizing the various points of view captured by the film crews, a job that would have originally fallen to ten directors. He was also in control of the final cut, without any outside interference. The appointment of Klein as director did not inspire confidence in African filmmakers. For Ousmane Sembène, who was present during the festival and familiar with the cinémathèque, the choice of a non-African went over poorly. “This is a contradiction. It is not a question of the Algerians who played the apprentice but a matter of principle. It is a festival of African culture, and it is Africans who have the right to film the festival. We are able to take a critical view of ourselves.” For the Algerian minister, using Klein would allow the film to gain better access to a European public. At first, however, this did not work. In addition to the anticolonial, anti-imperialist discourse of the film, the fact that its production was one hundred percent Algerian impeded its broad circulation. It was long ignored by both leaders of Algerian cinema (who felt that the film had been made without them) and by Klein himself, who had done nothing to promote it. It was not until the 2009 Pan-African Cultural Festival forty years later that its organizers decided to rerelease it in coordination with the European television network ARTE, which had proposed to distribute a package containing both of Klein’s films.

It was necessary to go in search of the original materials in order to digitize them after Klein got permission to “review” the editing of the 1969 version. Klein came to Algiers in 2009 to inaugurate the film section of the second PANAF with the screening of his film, The Pan-African Cultural Festival of Algiers. During the presentation, he expressed surprise to be invited to Algiers forty years after the first festival and asked his audience a loaded question: “In 1969, we were elated by the presence of the world’s liberation movements here in Algiers. What is your motivation for this second festival today?” 

This did not prevent the Algerian minister of culture from restoring, a few months later in Paris, two thirty-five-millimeter copies of Algerian films in the Klein collection, based in the United States, which had been missing from the catalog: The Pan-African Culture Festival in Algiers and Eldrige Cleaver, Black Panther. African cinema had undeniably been supported by the surging unification movement following the creation of the Organisation of African Unity. This gave rise to the Fédération PANAFricaine des cinéastes (Federation of Pan-African Filmmakers, or FEPACI), which, it should be remembered, came from a document entitled “The Algiers Charter,” which was adopted during the African filmmakers’ symposium that took place in the Ibn Khaldoun theater in July 1969, on the fringes of the first PanAfrican Cultural Festival. This meeting, organized by the Cinémathèque algérienne, was strongly guided by pioneers such as Paulin Vieyra, Ousmane Sembène, and Johnson Traore but also featured Youssef Chahine, Lakhdar Hamina, Ahmed Rachedi, the South African African National Congress member Lionel Ngakane, and the Ivorian Désiré Ecaré. It was they who called for the creation of FEPACI and for the support of a Pan-African film festival, which would later become the Panafrican Film and Television Festival of Ouagadougou in Burkina Faso. Tunisian film critic Tahar Cheriaa, who was not present at the meeting, could be released from his Bourguiba jail cell thanks to the international appeal started by the forty African filmmakers who were present. The Algiers Charter was later affirmed in his presence in Tunis in 1970, on the occasion of a foundational congress. 

After the symposium, African filmmakers adopted resolutions and made recommendations to the Organisation of African Unity. The content of these texts shows that they did everything they could to distance themselves from the populist and Marxist terminology in vogue at the time. They were satisfied to reaffirm that “the cinema is the safest and fastest way to rehabilitate and affirm the African personality” and that it is a powerful force for progress.Noting that a cinematic industry did not exist in Africa at the level of policy coordination between African states or in the domain of production, distribution, and operation; that filmmaking was still in the hands of foreign companies; and that the vast majority of African states did not fully control their domestic markets, these African filmmakers recommended the creation of a press office in Algiers that would function until the Addis Ababa meeting in May 1970. Until then, this provisionary liaison office attached to the Algerian Cinémathèque was notably responsible for keeping files on African filmmakers, publishing and distributing a newsletter, exploring the production of a review of African cinema, and encouraging all means of promoting African filmmakers and their works, including their enrollment in yearbooks and professional publications. Moreover, this press office was tasked by the general assembly of the African filmmakers (later to become the Pan African Federation of Filmmakers) to prepare:

1. The creation of a unique African film festival in a place designated by the general assembly, and

2. he creation of a film archive that would span the continent, the role of which would be to safeguard African film, archiving any film or negative entrusted to it by filmmakers and producers without compromising their rights to their work.

It is worth recalling that visiting the Algerian Cinémathèque has been, since its inception in 1965, a rite of passage for African filmmakers. Sembéne was often present, and most filmmakers such as Djibril Diop Mambéty and Mamadou Samb showed their first short films in the theater on the rue Ben M’hidi. Film critics such as Jean-Louis Bory, Jean Douchet, and Claude Michel Cluny, who regularly frequented the cinémathèque in Algiers, have discovered a number of African films there. Vautier acquired the rights to the first film by Sembène, Borom Sarret, which is considered the first African film shot in Africa. At its inception the Algerian Cinémathèque acquired Sembène’s Le Norie de . . . (Black Girl), made in 1966. Given the relationship between Algerian and French film archives, the recognition and success of these pioneer films sometimes began in Algiers. 

The Algerian Cinémathèque has continued for a long time to make continental cinema its priority and to welcome filmmakers from different regions of Africa. It has also served as an intermediary to bring in Algerian funding, which through the first Senegalese-Algerian coproduction enabled Sembène to make Camp de Thiaroye in 1988, which evokes the massacre of Senegalese infantrymen at Camp Thiaroye a few months before the end of the Second World War. It was banned for ten years in France and three in Senegal. By Way of Keeping Score In 2009, at the request of the Organisation of African Unity, Algeria organized the second Pan-African Cultural Festival. This implies that during these forty years, with the exception of the World Festival of Black Arts in Dakar, no other African country had volunteered to take up the Pan-African torch. In 1969 the spending, number of guests, and activities far exceeded what was proposed by PANAF. However, it entered history and has been remembered as a unique global event. The reason lies in a few words: the power of the dream of freedom inspired by decolonization. This impetus and the presence of the liberation movements are what made this festival an exceptional event. An event on a planetary scale, the first PANAF was the result of revolutionary voluntarism. Some of the participants came from the heart of Africa, where wars of independence were still raging. They were sent to Algiers by Algerian military aircraft in conditions worthy of a great spy thriller. Algeria had little money at the time, and hotels were rare. A majority of the five thousand guests slept in schools converted into dormitories. But the level of enthusiasm did not disappoint, nor did the human warmth in this beautiful month of July 1969, allowing artists and spectators to stay up all night. 

Forty years later the budget for the second PANAF exceeded one hundred million dollars. Eight thousand guests attended this festival under ideal conditions. The greatest African singers, including Salif Keita, Cesária Évora, Youssou N’Dour, Alpha Blondy, and Binyavanga Wainaina, appeared on stage. Even if it did not match the first PANAF in enthusiasm, the Algerian public reclaimed their nights after a decade of fundamentalist terror. As Khalida Toumi, the former minister of culture and main organizer of the second PANAF, has said, “During these long evenings, families faced their old fears, coming out to vibrate to the sound of African rhythms.” Two films bear witness to this second festival. Africa Is Back, directed by Chergui Kharroubi and Salem Brahimi, recounts the highlights of the festival, with Danny Glover and Manthia Diawara leading the way. For its part, a second production initiated by the festival, Afrique vue par . . . (Africa Seen by . . . ), allowed ten renowned African directors (representing all major language areas of the continent), through their respective short contributions, to give their personal visions of Africa early in the new millennium.  

For various reasons, despite their great technical and narrative qualities, these films made entirely by Africans have been barred from global distribution. They deserve to be revisited. There is no doubt that Pan-African discourse is less attractive today than it was forty years ago. But it has been recently employed with increasing regularity, reaffirming the role of Pan-African culture as an engine of progress and freedom, a role that is starting to become credible again. Meanwhile, Klein’s film testifies to disappeared hope and vanished utopias. Despite the criticism it has received (above all, the fact that a film about Africa was not made by Africans), it is one of the few documents that vividly portrays the popular, political, and cultural human adventure that was the first Pan-African Cultural Festival. The film has also become a mirror reflecting our broken dreams. 

Ahmed Bedjaoui is a professor of cinema at University of Algiers 3. 

Notes:

 1. The Algerian National Liberation Front appeared on the first of November 1954. It congregated the different political forces engaged in the Algerian National movement and was supposed to dissolve once independence was acquired. 

  2. Jeffrey James Byrne, “La guerre d’Algérie, facteur de changement du système international, histoire de la guerre d’Algérie, ouvrage collectif,” in Histoire de l’Algérie à la période coloniale 1830– 1962, ed. Abderrahmane Bouchène, et al. (Paris et Barzakh Alger: La Découverte, 2012), 661. 

 3. Ibid., 662. 

 4. Adlène Meddi, interview with Djelloul Malaika, “Chargé des mouvements de libération dans les années 1960 et 1970: Mandela, Zuma, Cabral . . . mes amis, mes frères de combat!,” El Watan, June 11, 2010. 

 5. Ibid.  

 6. Ryszard Kapuscinski, Ébène: Aventures africaines  (Paris: Pocket, 2002). 

 7. Archie Shepp pronounced these three words in French for the audience. 

 8. Kathleen Neal Cleaver, “Back to Africa: The Evolution of the International Section of the Black Panther Party (1969–1972),” in The Black Panther Party [Reconsidered], ed. Charles E. Jones (Baltimore, MD: Black Classic Press, 1998). 

 9. Ibid., 21 

 10. Cleaver, “Back to Africa.”  

 11. Olivier Hadouchi, “Retour sur le festival panafricain d’Alger de 1969,” Cinefabrika, March 25, 2010. Translated into English under the title “‘African Culture Will Be Revolutionary or Will Not Be’: William Klein’s Film of the First Pan‐African Festival of Algiers (1969),” doi 10.1080/09528822.2011.545619. Hadouchi is a French University lecturer and researcher, mostly specialized in thirdworld liberation movements. 

 12. The World Festival of Black Arts, known as FESMAN, was established at that time with Stokely Charmichael in Conakry, Guinea. Miriam Makeba turned down the FESMAN invitation, preferring to come to Algiers for PANAF. But that was rather due to Senghor’s contentious relationship with Sékou Touré. 

 13. Tahar Ben Jelloun, “Interview with Ousmane Sembéne,” Souffles 16–17 (1970). 

 14. Stanislas Spiro Adotevi, Négritude et Négrologues (Paris: Union générale d’éditions, 1972). 

 15. Houari Boumédiène was the chief of the Algerian army when he organized a coup in 1965 against the elected president, Ahmed Ben Bella, and took power until his death in 1978. He undoubtedly played a crucial role in the organization of PANAF through his commitment to the liberation of the African states still under colonial rule in 1969. Although Algeria was a poor country at that time, he prioritized funding for this expensive international meeting.  

 16. Frantz Fanon, Peau noire, masques blancs (Paris: Le Seuil, 1952). 

 17. Pan-African Cultural Manifesto (First All African Cultural Festival, Algiers, Algeria: Organization of African Unity, 1969), 1.  

 18. Ousmane Sembène, quoted in Souffles 4, no. 16/17 (1970): 23. Author’s translation.

  19. While preparing The Pan-African Festival of Algiers, Klein was inspired to film a parallel documentary, Eldridge Cleaver, Black Panther.

 20. These filmmakers represented Algeria, South Africa’s African National Congress,  Angola,  Ivory Coast, Cameroon,  CongoBrazzaville (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo), Ghana, French Upper Volta (now Burkina Faso),  Guinea,  Portuguese Guinea, Mali, Mozambique, Morocco, Nigeria, Senegal, Sudan, the United Arab Republic (now Egypt), and Ethiopia.

  21.  “Resolutions of the Symposium of African Filmmakers,” in Souffles 4, no. 16/17 (1970): 23. Author’s translation. 

 22. The Union panafricaine des cinéastes was the brainchild of the first African filmmakers’ meeting in Algiers during PANAF in August 1969. The pioneers decided to establish a provisional press office in Algiers, which was supposed to function until the official decision of the Organisation of the African Union. Three representatives from Algeria, Tunisia, and Senegal presented the project at the African summit held in Addis Ababa in May 1970. Renamed the Pan African Federation of Filmmakers (FEPACI), it was based in Dakar, and Samb Babacar served as its first general secretary. Consequently, FEPACI was officially inaugurated at the Carthage Film Festival in 1970.

 23. Pan-African Cultural Manifesto.

 24. The Algerian Cinémathèque has been for more than a decade a “passage obligé” for most of African filmmakers who presented their films in Algiers before being introduced to European cinémathèques and film critics. 

 25. Julien Fargettas, “La révolte des tirailleurs sénégalais de Thiaroye,” Vingtième siècle, revue d’histoire 92, no. 4 (2006): 117– 30.

 26. Africa Is Back, documentary, directed by Salem Brahimi and Chergui Kharroubi (Algiers: 2010). 

 27. These filmmakers include Balufu Bakupa-Kanyinda, Rachid Bouchareb, Nouri Bouzid, Sol de Carvalho, Zézé Gamboa, Flora Gomes, Gaston Kaboré, Mama Keïta, Teddy Mattera, and Abderrahmane Sissako.

Launched in 1993, the NYAFF is one of the first film festivals in the United States to reflect on the myriad ways African and diaspora filmmakers have used the moving image to tell their own complex and nuanced stories.“The New York African Film Festival was founded to counteract the voice-over, where Africans were being spoken for over grim images, and to provide a place where the seventh art could become a weapon for us to reclaim our voices, to reappropriate our images, and to add layers to the narrative,” said NYAFF founder and AFF Executive Director Mahen Bonetti. “In each frame presented by the festival over three decades, we have found our connection with each other and our footing in other people’s spaces, while presenting myriad stories about all corners of the African diaspora and the human experience itself.”

In three decades, this mission has expanded to include all corners of the African diaspora and the debut presentations of numerous films and directors that have since gained critical acclaim and canonical fame. Program highlights corresponding to the different venues follow below. For the complete schedule of NYAFF30 films and events, please refer to the festival website link.africanfilmny.org/nyaff30. Film at Lincoln Center tickets go on sale April 13: https://www.filmlinc.org/festivals/new-york-african-film-festival/.

Film at Lincoln Center (FLC): May 10-16, tickets go on sale April 13

Opening week highlights at FLC include the New York premiere of Moussa Sène Absa’s Xalé, the third film in the Senegalese director’s trilogy focused on women; and the U.S. premiere of Hyperlink, an anthology of four short films by South African filmmakers (Mzonke Maloney, Nolitha Mkulisi, Julie Nxadi, and Evan Wigdorowitz) who reflect on the seductive, treacherous, and illusory nature of the internet.

U.S. feature film premieres, among them Fatou Cissé’s A Daughter’s Tribute to Her Father: Souleymane Cissé, a deeply intimate portrayal of one of Africa’s most celebrated filmmakers; Dent pour Dent by Ottis Ba Mamadou, about a civil servant who loses his job, becomes dependent on his wife, and seeks revenge through a marabout, or holy man; Katy Léna N’diaye’s Money, Freedom, a Story of CFA Franc, a revealing account of why a currency holdover resulting from French colonialism is still in use to this day; and Ery Claver’s Our Lady of the Chinese Shop, a delicate urban tale that reveals a family and city full of resentment, greed, and torment in Luanda, Angola, in part due to a peculiar, holy plastic figure of Our Lady.

Other feature film highlights include the New York premiere of Know Your Place, Zia Mohajerjasbi’s slice-of-life drama set in Seattle in which an errand undertaken by Robel, a 15-year-old Eritrean-American, turns into an odyssey across the rapidly gentrifying city; and the recently restored Den Muso, Souleymane Cissé’s 1975 classic drama, the first film in the Bambara language, about the devastating consequences of a young woman’s rape and subsequent pregnancy.

Additionally, FLC will host two short film programs—Call and Response, a series of contemporary shorts exploring the imaginative, expressive ways individuals throughout the African diaspora respond to obstacles and desires, and Freeforms, a collection of eight poetic shorts marked by stylistic and emotional daring with themes ranging from magic to retribution.

Related FLC talks and events

FREE MASTERCLASS with acclaimed Senegalese filmmaker Moussa Sène Absa on Saturday, May 13, at 11:30 am, emphasizing the impact of migration on familial and community bonds from the perspective of mothers. The event takes place in the Amphitheater at the Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center with tickets available here.

FRFREE KEYNOTE TALKS: Safi Faye Memorial Talk: Women of African Cinema, a conversation bringing together contemporary African directors and curators to reflect on the pioneering legacy of the feminist filmmaker in the wake of her recent passing. The event will be held in the Amphitheater in FLC’s Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center RSVP here. In Conversation with Souleymane Cissé and Moussa Sène Absa – in conjunction with retrospective screenings of Yeelen and Den Muso at this year’s festival, NYAFF30 is pleased to host a special conversation featuring Cissé and Moussa Sène Absa. RSVP here.

Evoking poet Lucille Clifton’s call to “sing for red dust and black clay” in her book of poetry Good News About the Earth, Nigerian-American artist Zainab Aliyu invites thirty filmmakers working within African diasporic cinema to explore pottery as a metaphor that points towards the potential of free forms in her video piece, From red dust to Black clay. This free digital art exhibition will run from May 11 – 16 in the Amphitheater.

Maysles Cinema (Harlem): May 19-21, tickets go on sale April 25

The Maysles segment of the festival opens with the New York premiere of Sierra Leonean director Sessy Kamara’s Sisterhood, which follows twin sisters Husinatu and Hassanatu as they emigrate to the Middle East in search of better economic prospects and become domestic workers. Other highlights include the US premiere of the animated drama, Nayola by José Miguel Ribeiro, which explores Angola’s post-civil war impact on three generations of women; the US premiere of Branwen Okpako’s interactive documentary, Return to Chibok, adapted from Helon Habila’s book detailing his journey to Chibok two years after the notorious abduction of 279 boarding school girls; and a short film program titled Collective Forces, examining community efforts to enact change and take matters into their own hands.

Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM): May 26-June 1, tickets go on sale April 24

The final segment of the festival takes place at Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) under the name FilmAfrica, and together with BAM’s annual DanceAfrica, will celebrate the vibrant artistry and revolutionary history of Ghana. Included in the NYAFF30 lineup is the world premiere and director’s cut of Kwesi Owusu and Nii Kwate Owoo’s newly restored 1991 British-Ghanaian classic, Ama: An African Voyage of Discovery, in which a golden floppy disk becomes a prophetic device through which a young Ghanaian girl living in England rediscovers her African identity. The recently rediscovered Things Fall Apart (1971) by Hans Jürgen Pohland, based on the fictional trilogy, Things Fall Apart and No Longer at Ease by the late legendary Nigerian novelist Chinua Achebe, will also be presented for the first time since its premiere over 50 years ago.

Other FilmAfrica highlights include Kwaw Ansah’s 1989 historical drama Heritage Africa; C.J. “Fiery” Obasi’s mesmerizing Mami Wata, whose Brazilian DP Lílis Soares won the Sundance 2023 Cinema Dramatic Special Jury Award for Cinematography; Certain Winds from the South, the debut film by Ghanaian photographer Eric Gymafi based on Ama Ata Aidoo’s titular short story; the visually stunning Atopias: The Homeless Wanderer by Ethiopian-Eritrean visual artist, Daniela Yohannes; and William Klein’s 1969 The Panafrican Festival of Algiers documentary featuring Nina Simone, Eldridge Cleaver, Archie Shepp, Miriam Makeba, Stokely Carmicheal, amongst others. A program of short films by the new wave of Ghanaian filmmakers will also screen here.

To kick off the festival, the NYAFF will present a Town Hall at The Africa Center on Thursday, May 4, at 6:00 pm, featuring African and diaspora artists displaying and discussing work that explore the festival’s theme Freeforms. Participants include Assane Sy, Senegalese photographer and film curator of Jollof Films; Ladan Osman, Somali-American poet, and filmmaker; Afro-Mexican Bocafloja, rapper, poet, and spoken word artist; and Khane Kutzwell, a Trinidadian-American hair stylist and barber for film and TV. Moderator Maboula Soumahoro is a French-Ivorian scholar and writer, whose book, Black is the Journey: Africana the Name (2021), will contextualize the program. A free post-festival outdoor screening will also be presented at The Africa Center on Saturday, June 3.

For information about attending the NYAFF30 Opening Night Party, contact info@africanfilmny.org.

The programs of AFF are made possible by the generous support of the National Endowment for the Arts, New York State Council on the Arts, New York Community Trust, NYC Department of Cultural Affairs, Bradley Family Foundation, JPMorgan Chase & Co., Domenico Paulon Foundation, NYC & Company, French Cultural Services, Mayor’s Office of Media and Entertainment, Manhattan Portage, Black Hawk Imports, Essentia Water, South African Consulate General, National Film and Video Foundation and Motion Picture Enterprises.

Films & Descriptions

Film at Lincoln Center: May 10 – 16, 2023
Opening Night, May 10 at the Walter Reade Theater – 165 W. 65th Street, New York, NY
May 11 – 16 at the Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center – 144 W. 65th Street, New York, NY

FLC Opening Night
Xalé
Moussa Sène Absa, 2022, Senegal/Ivory Coast, 101m
Wolof with English subtitles
New York Premiere

Awa, a 15-year-old schoolgirl, is happily living her teenage years alongside her twin brother, Adama, who dreams of Europe. When their grandmother dies, their Aunt Fatou and Uncle Atoumane promise to marry in order to preserve the family union. But Fatou does not love Atoumane and the latter, tired of waiting to consummate his marriage, commits an act from which there is no going back. This film is the third in Moussa Sène Absa’s trilogy focused on women.
Wednesday, May 10 at 6:30pm (Q&A with Moussa Sène Absa)
Thursday, May 11 at 4:00pm

FLC Centerpiece
Hyperlink
Mzonke Maloney, Nolitha Mkulisi, Julie Nxadi, and Evan Wigdorowitz, 2022, South Africa, 63m
English, French, Xhosa, and Swahili with English subtitles
U.S. Premiere

A Christian convert is preparing for his rebirth as a man of god—unaware that his teenage daughter, who hasn’t heard from him in three months, has declared him dead on social media. A schoolgirl sees her private life made public when she invites a classmate, who is an online influencer, to her home. A divorced man with financial troubles so wants to show his young daughter he can be a good father that he fails to see the precarious position he is maneuvering himself into. And a poet and commentator risks losing herself and those she loves in her desire to use her fame to achieve social change. In four short films, young South African filmmakers reflect on the seductive, and at times treacherous, illusory reality of the internet. Using humor, suspense, and social criticism, this collective production sketches a society dominated by idealized projections of the dreamt self.
Saturday, May 13 at 6:30pm (Q&A with Mzonke Maloney, Nolitha Mkulisi, Julie Nxadi, and Evan Wigdorowitz)
Tuesday, May 16 at 4:00pm

Colette and Justin
Alain Kassanda, Democratic Republic of Congo/France/Belgium, 2022, 89m
Lingala and French with English subtitles
North American Premiere

Born in Kinshasa and living in Paris, filmmaker Alain Kassanda embodies the classic immigrant dual identity: in the Democratic Republic of Congo he is seen as French, while in France he is seen as Congolese. Determined to understand the colonial legacy from which he comes, Kassanda convinces his maternal grandparents—Colette and Justin—to sit for a series of interviews. Together, they watch old news footage, remember a visit from the Belgian king, and recall what life was like as part of the nascent Black bourgeoisie who served the colonial administration. But Colette and Justin is more than a film about family reminiscences. Kassanda uses a wealth of black-and-white archival footage to tell the story, superimposing his own thoughts and his grandparents’ voices over the visuals—in effect, using the colonizers’ images against them. (He generally avoids footage of the horrors, focusing instead on daily life.) Kassanda, we learn, has two heroes: Justin and inaugural Congolese prime minister Patrice Lumumba, who was murdered by secessionists in collusion with Belgium. In the course of making Colette and Justin, he realizes their lives were intertwined far more deeply than he knew.

Preceded by
Ota Benga
Chadrack Banikina and Cecilia Zoppelletto, 2023, Democratic Republic of Congo, 6m
French with English subtitles
World Premiere
An animated film that captures a moment in the true-life story of Ota Benga (1883–1916), the pygmy who was exhibited at the Bronx Zoo. Desperate to return home to the rainforest in Congo but trapped in Lynchburg, Virginia, Ota Benga reflects on being bought by so-called “civilized society” and treated like an animal—a passionate call by the fire to return to his ancestors.
Co-presented by POV
Saturday, May 13 at 4:00pm (Q&A with Cecilia Zoppelletto and producer Guy Kazadi)

Cordelia
Tunde Kelani, 2021, Nigeria, 98m
New York Premiere

Adapted from the eponymous novel by Nigerian author and poet Femi Osofisan, Cordelia is a romantic period-drama where romance meets politics. This novella starts with a lecturer in a disturbed state about his marriage, which is resulting in an inability to teach his students. One of them later confronts him in his office about his shoddy lecture, and the student in question is accompanied to the lecturer’s office by another student named Cordelia. But little does our lecturer know that Cordelia is about to be at the center of a major riot at the institution.

Preceded by
Employee of the Month
Goga Clay, 2022, Nigeria, 19m
New York Premiere
Ibinabo, a young husband and father-to-be, lives an unremarkable but exemplary life. He strives to prove himself to his boss, but gets caught up in the horrors of the October 2020 protests against police brutality.
Monday, May 15 at 8:30pm (Q&A with Goga Clay)

A Daughter’s Tribute to Her Father: Souleymane Cissé
Fatou Cissé, 2022, Mali, 73m
English, Bambara, and French with English subtitles
U.S. Premiere

An intimate portrayal of the life and career of Souleymane Cissé, one of Africa’s most celebrated filmmakers. The film traces the Malian director’s trajectory from his formative years in Bamako to the present day, through interviews with Cissé and those who knew him best. It celebrates his groundbreaking films and highlights their enduring relevance.
Co-presented by The Future of Film is Female
Thursday, May 11 at 6:15pm (Q&A with Fatou Cissé)
Friday, May 12 at 3:30pm

Den Muso
Souleymane Cissé, 1975, Mali, 88m
Bambara with English subtitles

A mute girl’s life takes a dramatic turn when she is raped and, as a result, impregnated. Her family is at once plunged into chaos. The film not only explores the repercussions of her assault but also shines a light on the societal and economic challenges that women dealt with in urban Mali during the 1970s. It is a poignant and thought-provoking portrayal of the difficulties that women continue to face in many parts of the world today.

Den Muso was restored by Souleymane Cissé and La Cinémathèque française in 2020, in collaboration with the Cinémathèque Afrique and the French Institute, thanks to the support of Pathé. The restoration work was carried out at the Hiventy laboratory using the original negatives and 16mm magnetic tapes.
Co-presented by Villa Albertine
Friday, May 12 at 5:30pm
Followed by a keynote talk with the director. RSVP for the talk here.

Dent pour Dent
Ottis Ba Mamadou​, 2022, Senegal, 84m
French with English Subtitles
U.S. Premiere

In this comedic drama, Idrissa lives in the suburbs of Dakar, Senegal. As a result of budgetary restrictions imposed by the IMF, then headed by Dominique Strauss-Kahn, he lost his job as a civil servant. Since then, Idrissa has been looking for work, without success. His pride as an African man is all the more affected by the fact that he is now entirely dependent on his wife, Viviane, who somehow manages to support the family through her medical practice. Aminata (Idrissa and Viviane’s daughter) and Moussa, two young students in love with each other, also see their lives disrupted by the economic situation imposed on the country. After yet another humiliation, Idrissa, who holds Strauss-Kahn responsible for his misfortune, decides to go and see a marabout to prepare his revenge.
Tuesday, May 16 at 8:45pm (Q&A with Ottis Ba Mamadou​)

Know Your Place
Zia Mohajerjasbi, 2022, USA, 120m
English and Tigrinya with English subtitles
New York Premiere

Know Your Place is a slice-of-life drama set in present-day Seattle. Robel (a 15-year-old Eritrean-American) and his best friend, Ethiopian-American Fahmi, embark on a journey to drop off a suitcase containing medicine and cash with a friend traveling back to Eritrea because of a family member’s sudden illness. An unexpected turn transmutes Robel’s simple errand into an odyssey across the rapidly gentrifying city; in the process he navigates directions to make his delivery on time, along with the challenges of familial responsibility, self-identification, and dislocation amid the ongoing redevelopment and displacement of the only community he’s ever known as home.
Co-presented by Tsion Café
Sunday, May 14 at 7:30pm (Q&A with Zia Mohajerjasbi)

Money, Freedom, a Story of CFA Franc
Katy Léna N’diaye, 2022, Senegal/France/Belgium/Germany, 104m
French with English subtitles
U.S. Premiere

The year 1960 marked the end of the colonial empires across the African continent. France disappeared from the map, leaving behind a colonial creation, the CFA Franc, a currency that still circulates in almost all of France’s former territories south of the Sahara. Why did those countries never denounce this strange legacy after they regained their freedom? The film delves into a little-known story that started in the 19th century and continues to the present time.
Co-presented by Africa Is a Country
Sunday, May 14 at 2:00pm (Q&A with Katy Léna N’diaye)

Our Lady of the Chinese Shop
Ery Claver, 2022, Angola, 98m
Portuguese, English, and Chinese with English subtitles
U.S. Premiere

When a Chinese merchant brings to a neighborhood of Luanda a peculiar holy plastic figure of Our Lady, a mourning mother seeks peace, a committed barber starts a new cult, and a stray kid looks for revenge for his lost friend. This delicate urban tale reveals a family and city full of resentment, greed, and torment.
Co-presented by Akoroko
Saturday, May 13 at 8:30pm
Monday, May 15 at 3:30pm

Shimoni
Angela Wanjiku Wamai, 2022, Kenya, 97m
English, Swahili, and Kikuyu with English subtitles
New York Premiere

After seven years in prison, 35-year-old Geoffrey (Justin Mirichii) is released into the care of a Catholic priests’ compound in Shimoni, a small and sleepy village in rural Kenya. As we discover, Geoffrey knows this place—all too well—as “the pit.” A revered English teacher before his time inside, he now does farmyard chores, attends church services as required, and maintains a distance from other residents. Not that he ever goes anywhere else; some unnamed fear prevents him from stepping outside the gate. Then a man with a distinctive patch of white hair appears, terrifying Geoffrey so much that he wets himself. Weru (Daniel Njoroge) has haunted Geoffrey’s dreams for decades. Now he can’t face him. Film editor Angela Wanjiku’s gripping directorial debut explores the ways in which memory and emotion seize control of the body, which in turn may speak when words fail.
Co-presented by The Future of Film is Female
Friday, May 12 at 9:00pm
Monday, May 15 at 5:30pm

With Peter Bradley
Alex Rappoport, 2022, USA, 86m
New York Premiere

An intimate, provocative series of conversations with 80-year-old abstract painter Peter Bradley. At turns bitter and humorous, the story of Bradley’s rise to success as a Black artist–and subsequent fall from grace–unfolds as we watch his artistic process amidst the changing seasons at his rural home and studio.
Co-presented by Karma Gallery
Sunday, May 14 at 5:00pm (Q&A with Alex Rappoport)

Yeelen
Souleymane Cissé, 1987, Mali, 105m
Bambara with English subtitles

Set in a timeless past, Yeelen recounts the mythic tale of a power struggle between father and son. Soma Diarra, the jealous father and member of a feared Bambara secret society, plots to kill his son and rival, Nianankoro. Highly stylized and deliberately paced, Yeelen forces the viewer to navigate fundamental oppositions: change and tradition, life and death, light and darkness. Inspired by the classic oral literature of the Mande, Souleymane Cissè traces the circle of time and shows us that the origin and the end are one and the same. Film Comment called Yeelen “not only the most beautifully photographed African film ever, but also the best African film ever made.” Winner of a Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival in 1987.

Followed by
Excerpt from Lights of Passage
Yeelen Cohen, 2023, USA/Mali, 12m
Lights of Passage is a hybrid autobiographical documentary, a cinematic baptism ceremony, and an homage to cultural preservation through ancestral storytelling practices. The story orbits two filmmakers at opposite ends of their careers, separated by oceans, who are cosmically connected through a name and a film.
Saturday, May 13 at 1:00pm (Q&A with Souleymane Cissé and Yeelen Cohen)

Shorts Program 1: Call and Response

Total Runtime = 86m
A shorts program examining the unique and expressive ways individuals throughout the African diaspora respond to obstacles and desires.

Okem
Joshua Okwuosa, 2022, Nigeria/USA, 15m
English and Igbo with English subtitles
New York Premiere
Okem, a Nigerian immigrant, is faced with his worst nightmare when he receives a call from home.

August Visitor
Ifeyinwa Arinze, 2022, USA, 11m
New York Premiere
When her widowed mother has a male friend over for dinner, an observant Nigerian-American teenager acts out, which leads her to a deeper perception of her mother.

Africans with Mainframes
Kima Hibbert, 2023, USA, 15m
New York Premiere
Africans with Mainframes is a short mockumentary following LaJoye Watkins, a reclusive Black woman living in Brooklyn. She is determined to tell a secret she has harbored all her life: electronic music was actually started by Black Southerners in the 1920s. Exploring themes of loneliness, revenge, and reclamation, Watkins takes us on a historical tour de force and a journey toward a spiritual awakening of her own.

Silsilad
Tariq Tarey, 2023, USA, 12m
New York Premiere
The story of three Somali-American artists, founders of the Minneapolis-based artists’ collective Soomaal House of Art, and the challenges they face running a community-based gallery for BIPOC artists and organizations. Including reflections by Congresswoman Ilhan Omar.

Mother’s Tongue
D. Wilmos Paul, 2022, USA, 16m
English and French with English subtitles
Junior, an African immigrant teenager ashamed of his accent, enrolls in a creative writing club thinking he can make it through the semester without speaking… and then is confronted with his worst fear.

A Laundry Day
Johanna Makabi, 2022, USA/France, 3m
World Premiere
Today, Fatou goes to the laundromat in Harlem and meets a young man.

Grace
Johanna Makabi, 2022, France, 14m
French with English subtitles
New York Premiere
Eight-year-old Grace hates her neighborhood, and she hates cheerleading. One day, she decides to join her father in space.
Co-presented by Be Reel Black Cinema Club
Thursday, May 11 at 8:30pm (Q&A with Ifeyinwa Arinze, Johanna Makabi, Kima Hibbert, and Tariq Tarey)

Shorts Program 2: Freeforms

Total Runtime = 99m
A collection of poetic, daring and stylistic shorts that take us on a contemplative emotional journey.

By Water
Iyabo Kwayana, 2022, USA, 12m
New York Premiere
In this animated short, an unlikely hero’s journey into his own memories becomes a vehicle for reconciliation and healing for himself and his sibling.

Buzz
Mohamed Fawi, 2022, Sudan, 20m
English and Arabic with English subtitles
North American Premiere
While her situation is deteriorating, a sick mother watches her son and daughter going through her tragedy and their new reality.

Hématome
Babetida Sadjo, 2022, Belgium, 19m
French with English subtitles
U.S. Premiere
Twenty-five years later, Judith finally dares to break her silence and seek justice for the rape that she suffered as a child. She bitterly discovers that a trial will not take place. Thirsting for justice, she confronts the pedophile who shattered her life.

He’s Dead Now
Tarek El Sherbeny, 2022, Egypt, 12m
Arabic with English subtitles
New York Premiere
Hazem is distraught after his family secrets are made public when his mother decides to expose his late father’s sexual affairs during his funeral rites.

The Truth About Alvert, the Last Dodo
Nathan Clement, 2022, Réunion/Switzerland, 17m
Réunion Creole with English subtitles
U.S. Premiere
On Réunion Island, little Lunet and his grandfather Dadabé set off on a quest to turn a chicken into a dodo bird whose magic feathers might save the child’s sick mother.

Yuri
Baky Dia, 2022, France, 12m
French with English subtitles
Chris Dolo is a technical engineer for Aqua-Space, a company involved in several controversies about the privatization of drinking water and the lack of it everywhere. He is also the father of Yuri Dolo, an 11-year-old genius with a passion for astrophysics who dreams of another life in the stars. As the two characters go about their daily lives, affected by the absence of a maternal figure, a supernatural presence seems to be watching them.

Grief Is the Glitch
Julia Mallory, 2022, USA, 3m
New York Premiere
Grief Is the Glitch is a visual and sonic meditation on the disorienting experience of loss. Mallory moves through an encounter with an oracle-like figure to archival footage of her late son, Julian, as he reflects on the impact of young lives lost to violence.

Ààrẹ
Taoheed Bayo and Mark Odumuyiwa, 2022, USA, 4m
Yoruba with English subtitles
Ààrẹ is a movement and dance performance piece that serves as archival preservation of cultural heritage and a symbolic representation of personal identity in a commemorative manner. Ààrẹ also includes the study of ewi (poems), oriki (panegyric), and the recitations of the late Adebayo Faleti in Tunde Kelani movies, among other Yoruba relevancies.
Co-presented by 1-54 Contemporary African Art Fair
Tuesday, May 16 at 6:00pm (Q&A with Iyabo Kwayana, Babetida Sadjo, Tarek El Sherbeny, Julia Mallory, Taoheed Bayo, and Mark Odumuyiwa)

Master Class with Moussa Sène Absa

Acclaimed Senegalese filmmaker Moussa Sène Absa will be presenting a masterclass on Saturday, May 13 in the Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center Amphitheater. The class probes the impact of migration on familial and community bonds and takes particular care to examine the perspectives of the mothers of migrants, who often provide the fare for passage. Within a global context, this masterclass will assess African cinema’s response to the question of “Who truly is welcome at havens’ shores?”
Saturday, May 13 at 11:30am, Amphitheater

Free Keynote Talks

Safi Faye Memorial Talk: Women of African Cinema

Safi Faye is best known as the first woman from Sub-Saharan Africa to ever direct a commercial feature film—1976’s Kaddu Beykat—but the Senegalese pioneer’s legacy and groundbreaking influence extend far beyond that landmark. Introduced to the world of cinema via an acting role in Jean Rouch’s Petit à petit (1971), Faye went on to create a monumental body of work that includes award-winning shorts and features, including Selbe: One Among Many (1983), and Mossane, which won the Un Certain Regard award at the Cannes Film Festival in 1997. Through both documentary and fiction modes, Faye sought to capture the agency, subjectivity, and beauty of African women, and bring to vivid life the everyday realities of rural Senegal. In honor of Faye’s recent passing on February 22, 2023, this conversation will bring together the directors Nuotama Bodomo, Jessica Beshir, Akosua Adoma Owusu, and Johanna Makabi to reflect on Faye’s legacy and what it means for feminist African cinema today. The conversation will be moderated by scholar and critic Yasmina Price.
Saturday, May 6th at 4pm, Amphitheater

In Conversation with Souleymane Cissé and Moussa Sène Absa

One of the living greats of cinema, Souleymane Cissé is known for catapulting African film to the world stage with Yeelen, which won the Grand Jury Prize at Cannes in 1987 and became the first African movie to be awarded at the festival. Over a long career, the Malian filmmaker, now 82, has pioneered an original, uncompromising style of realism and incisive social critique through films like Den Muso (1975), the first feature to made in the Malian language of Bambara; Baara (1977) which won the Etalon de Yennenga at FESPACO; and Waati, which was screened in Competition at Cannes in 1995. A beacon of inspiration for artists worldwide, Cissé has also dedicated his career to supporting African filmmaking through initiatives such as the Union of West African Cinema and Audiovisual Designers, which he founded.

In conjunction with retrospective screenings of Yeelen and Den Muso at this year’s festival, NYAFF30 is pleased to host a special conversation featuring Cissé and renowned Senegalese filmmaker and multi-disciplinary artist, Moussa Sène Absa whose acclaimed feature film, Xalé opens this year’s festival. The conversation will be moderated by Film Comment co-deputy editor Devika Girish.
Friday, May 12th, 7:30pm, Francesca Beale Theater

Maysles Cinema: May 19 – 21, 2023
343 Malcolm X Blvd, New York, NY

Maysles Opening Night
Sisterhood
Mohamed Sessy Kamara, 2022, Sierra Leone, 72m
Krio and Fula with English subtitles
New York Premiere

Husinatu and Hassanatu, twin sisters living in Sierra Leone, decide to move together to the Middle East to find better lives for themselves, their children, and their parents. Despite Husinatu’s frustrating experiences in the Middle East in the past, both sisters are determined to achieve their goals. Faced with the coronavirus crisis, they search for money in order to obtain new passports, visas, and travel arrangements through legal and illegal migration agents. The decision to migrate creates a conflict with their parents. Their father has always been supportive, but their mother, who wants them to get married and build a life in their own country, tries to stop them. But the twins don’t want a man controlling them and seek independence as they are convinced that a better life is not in their home country. This is a film about family relations, the search for independence, and a better future in opposition to family traditions.

Preceded by
Le père du marié / The Father of the Groom
Laurence Gavron, 2022, Senegal, 15m
Wolof and French with English subtitles
U.S. Premiere
Pap Ndiaye, a boatman from the village of Djiffer in the Saloum region of Senegal, is an old friend of director Laurence Gavron. He is getting ready for the traditional Serer wedding of his oldest son, which has all of its own rules and customs. Praise singers, a traditional healer, the bride first hidden and then discovered in the evening light—it’s the most beautiful party he could have dreamed of to honor his wife, his children, and his son’s in-laws. More than anything, this is a film about friendship.
Friday, May 19 at 7:00pm
Sunday, May 21 at 12:30pm (Q&A with Sessy Kamara)

Nayola
José Miguel Ribeiro, 2022, Portugal/Belgium/France/Netherlands, 83m
Portuguese and Kimbundu with English subtitles
U.S. Premiere

Angola. Three generations of women in a 25-year-long civil war: Lelena (the grandmother), Nayola (the daughter), and Yara (the granddaughter). Past and present interlace. Nayola goes in search of her missing husband at the height of the war. Decades later, the country is finally at peace, but Nayola has not returned. Yara has become a rebellious teenager and a provocative rapper who uses her music to promote social change. Lelena tries to keep Yara in check out of concern that the police will show up and arrest her. One night, a masked intruder breaks into their house, armed with a machete, in an encounter like nothing they could have imagined.

Preceded by
Bazigaga
Jo Ingabire Moys, 2022, Réunion/France, 27m
Kinyarwanda with English subtitles
New York Premiere
1994, Rwanda. As the civil war rages, Bazigaga takes in a father and daughter hunted by the militia.
Saturday, May 20 at 2:00pm

Return to Chibok
Branwen Okpako, 2023, Nigeria, 74m
English and Hausa with English subtitles
U.S. Premiere

Based on Helon Habila’s novel, The Chibok Girls, an account of his visit to Chibok two years after 279 girls were abducted from their boarding school there, this film re-enacts his journey. It is a film about listening, speaking, writing, and reading. All these methods of communication are employed by the film’s participants, who are for the most part non-actors. In addition to a real-time interactive score, participation from the audience is encouraged.

Preceded by
Apostles of Cinema
Darragh Amelia, Gertrude Malizana, Jesse Gerard Mpango, and Cece Mlay, 2022, Tanzania, 16m
Swahili with English subtitles
New York Premiere
Apostles of Cinema (or Tenzi za Sinema) follows Frank, DJ Black, and Rehema—three devoted film workers in Tanzania—as they reintroduce a classic piece of the country’s film history to their audiences of working-class cinephiles. We join them, alongside Maangamizi: The Ancient One (2001), on a journey through the labyrinth of informal libraries, studios, and cinemas that exist to keep film and film culture alive. A testament to the profound cultural value of film when made truly accessible.
Saturday, May 20 at 7:00pm (Q&A with Branwen Okpako)

Maaté, Africa’s Mom
Christian Dehugo, 2022, Guinea/Burkina Faso/France, 84m
French and Dioula. with English subtitles
U.S. Premiere

The Ivorian-Guinean artist Maaté Keita, a member of the famous trio “Les Go de Koteba,” which was formed in the early 1990s in the Ivory Coast, shares the ups and downs of the journey that led her to become a West African cultural icon. This film follows her ongoing efforts to use dance, theater, and music as a form of protest and free expression. Taking viewers on an emotional journey across several nations, we learn about the powerful influence of African music, dance, and customs.

Preceded by
Uptown Oasis
Ian Phillips, 2022, USA, 7m
New York Premiere
In 2004, Abdi Abajabal came to the United States from Ethiopia. In 2012, he decided to start a health juice shop in Harlem with only five hundred dollars to his name. Ten years later, he is still going.
Sunday, May 21 at 2:30pm (Q&A with Christian Dehugo and Ian Phillips)

Walls of Knowledge
Cheikh Ahmed Tidiane Sy, 2021, Senegal, 54m
Fula, Wolof and French with English subtitles
U.S. Premiere

Cheikh Anta Diop University in Dakar, Senegal, is one of sub-Saharan Africa’s oldest universities. Léocadie, Demba, M’bar, and Mamy discuss their daily challenges and disappointments that, though difficult, do not derail their aspirations in this temple of knowledge, where more than 80,000 students study and live. Their dorms have turned into sites of resistance and survival techniques. The majority of the students are from underprivileged backgrounds, and the educational and social environment on campus reflects this through protest movements in a variety of sectors, most notably education.

Preceded by
Tramadol
Adoum Moussa and Morgane Wirtz, 2022, Tunisia/Belgium, 31m
Hausa, French, English and Tamashek with English subtitles
U.S. Premiere
A motorbike is speeding through Niger. On board is Moussa, a young Tuareg, and hidden in his vehicle are fifty tablets of tramadol, one of the most popular narcotics in West Africa. Following Moussa, we meet the smugglers and users of this opioid.
Sunday, May 21 at 4:30pm (Q&A with Cheikh Ahmed Tidiane Sy)

Lobola, A Bride’s True Price?
Sihle Hlophe, 2022, South Africa, 95m
English, SiSwati, isiZulu, SeSotho, isiXhosa and XiTsonga with English subtitles
New York Premiere

When an opinionated filmmaker agrees to marry her long-term boyfriend, she must decide if she will break with tradition and reject “lobola,” a Bantu cultural practice that involves the prospective groom paying a “bride price” to the family of the bride-to-be, or not.
Co-presented by POV
Sunday, May 21 at 7:00pm (Q&A with Sihle Hlophe)

Shorts Program: Collective Forces

Total Runtime = 102m
Three short films highlighting community efforts to act toward everyday challenges and take matters into their own hands.

The Reclaimers
Sifiso Mlungisi Khanyile, 2022, South Africa, 20m
English and Zulu English subtitles
This intimate portrait told in three acts follows the life and work of three of Johannesburg’s informal recyclers, or reclaimers, and their bid to gain recognition as formal laborers in the city. We tread on their heels as they navigate homelessness, the law, and survive the big city that is Johannesburg.

Plant Power
Florence Ayisi, 2023, UK, 39m
U.S. Premiere
Bristol, UK. Judith and Amrish, re-discover the healing power of plants during the COVID-19 lockdown, a time marked by fear, death, upheavals, isolation, and loneliness. Judith is passionate about green spaces for communal welfare while Amrish is keen on cultivating the Bayan tree. Through their experiences, nature, and its relationship to human wellbeing glow.

What These Walls Won’t Hold
Adamu Taye Chan, 2020, USA, 43m
New York Premiere
Filmed during the coronavirus pandemic, Adamu Chan’s What These Walls Won’t Hold is about the way the COVID-19 crisis brought into focus and catalyzed ongoing organizing efforts at San Quentin State Prison. Chan, who was incarcerated there, chronicles his journey home, interweaving his account with those of his loved ones both inside and outside the penitentiary walls. What emerges is a tender picture of a community thriving with relationships built on trust and an indomitable zeal to fight for a brighter and better future for those incarcerated. This film creates a blueprint for resistance and liberation that is for all and invites us to imagine the abolitionist world that awaits us at the end of our struggle.
Co-presented by African Communities Together
Saturday, May 20  at 4:30pm (Q&A with Sifiso Mlungisi Khanyile, Florence Ayisi and Adamu Taye Chan)

Brooklyn Academy of Music: May 26 – June 1, 2023
BAM Rose Cinemas (30 Lafayette Ave, Brooklyn, NY)

BAM FilmAfrica Opening Night
Ama: An African Voyage of Discovery (Restored – Director’s Cut)
Nii Kwate Owoo and Kwesi Owusu, 1991, Ghana/UK, 100m
World Premiere

A young Ghanaian girl living in England finds a golden floppy disk and learns its contents at the office where her mother cleans. The disk, through magical realism and by way of ancestors, helps her rediscover her African identity, becoming a prophetic device warning of the dangers of forgetting one’s heritage.
Co-presented by African Chophouse
Friday, May 26 at 7:00pm (Q&A with lead actress, Georgina Ackerman)
Monday, May 29 at 4:00pm

Certain Winds from the South
Eric Gyamfi, 2023, Ghana, 40m
English, Dagbanli, Twi, Arabic with English subtitles
North American Premiere

One fateful evening, a man named Issah tells his mother-in-law, M’ma Asana, that he intends to journey to southern Ghana in search of greener pastures. Adapting Ama Ata Aidoo’s short story, director Eric Gyamfi uncovers a vicious cycle of inequality that threatens these characters’ already precarious future.

Preceded by
Atopias: The Homeless Wanderer
Daniela Yohannes and Julien Béramis, 2023, Guadeloupe/Martinique, 26m
U.S. Premiere
The Homeless Wanderer is the second part of Daniela Yohannes’ Atopias trilogy, which grapples with geographies of migration, generational memory, and trauma. Yohannes does double duty, playing a woman trekking the Caribbean’s harsh natural landscapes in search of a transformational portal.
Saturday, May 27 at 6:30pm (Q&A with Certain Winds from the South set desiger, Courage Dzidula Kpodo)

Juwaa
Nganji Mutiri, 2021, Belgium/Democratic Republic of the Congo, 76m
French and Swahili with English subtitles
Years after a traumatic night, a son and a mother slowly reveal all the layers redefining what they mean to each other. A subtlety powerful drama.
Monday, May 29 at 6:30pm
Wednesday, May 31 at 7:45pm (Q&A with lead actress, Babetida Sadjo)

The Last Shelter
Ousmane Samassékou, 2021, France/Mali/South Africa, 85m
Moré, Bambara, and French with English subtitles

The House of Migrants in Gao, Mali, is a refuge at the southern edge of the Sahara desert. It welcomes those in transit towards Algeria in the north, or on their way back after a failed attempt to make it to Europe. When Esther and Kady, two teenage girls from Burkina Faso, arrive to regain the strength to continue their journey, they form a friendship with Natacha, a migrant woman in her forties whose memory has faded over the years, along with her hopes of regaining her home. The trio finds a semblance of family life, sharing moments of joy, hope, and tenderness. But the girls can’t shake the dream of a future abroad, even when their journey collides with the ones who came back, burdened by failure and trauma.
Saturday, May 27 at 2:00pm

Heritage Africa
Kwaw Ansah, 1989, Ghana, 110m

Kwesi Atta Bosomefi prefers to be called Quincy Arthur Bosomfield. A perfect product of colonial education, he has embraced English culture and become a district commissioner. In the process, he has abandoned his African heritage and all that has real meaning to him. Only a series of humiliating encounters and frightening dreams can help him recover his true identity.
Saturday, May 27 at 4:00pm
Tuesday, May 30 at 8:00pm

Tug of War / Vuta n’ kuvute
Amil Shivji, 2021, Tanzania/South Africa/Germany/Qatar, 92m
English and Swahili with English subtitles

A coming-of-age political love story set in the final years of British colonial Zanzibar. Denge, a young freedom fighter meets Yasmin, an Indian-Zanzibari woman in the middle of the night as she is on her way to be married. Passion and revolution escalate.
Saturday, May 27 at 8:15pm
Tuesday, May 30 at 4:00pm

Things Fall Apart
Hans Jürgen Pohland, 1971, Nigeria, 91m

When Obi Okonkwo completes his studies in England and returns to Nigeria, he finds himself in a country marked by rapid industrialization and deep political change. Navigating romantic love and the expectations and disappointments of modern Nigeria, he experiences rampant corruption, the dominance of Europeans, and conflicts between modern and traditional values. Adapted from the novels Things Fall Apart (1958) and No Longer at Ease (1960)—two parts of Chinua Achebe’s so-called African Trilogy—this rarely seen and recently recovered feature film was produced by Nigerian filmmaker Francis Oladele and directed by Berlin-based filmmaker Hans Jürgen Pohland.
Co-presented by Alfreda’s Cinema
Sunday, May 28 at 6:00pm
Tuesday, May 30 at 6:00pm

Mami Wata
C.J. “Fiery” Obasi, 2023, Nigeria, 107m
West African Pidgin, English and Fon with English subtitles

In Iyi village, villagers worship the mermaid deity Mami Wata and turn to their healer Mama Efe, the intermediary between them and Mami Wata, as well as Mama Efe’s daughter Zinwe and her protegee Prisca. When their children begin to die and disappear, local resident Jabi casts doubt on the population, while Zinwe flees, driven by her own anguish. Soon, the arrival of rebellious warlord Jasper tips the scales in Jabi’s favor. With the village under new control, Prisca and Zinwe must plot to save their people and restore Mami Wata’s glory to Iyi.
Co-presented by Nollybabes
Sunday, May 28 at 8:30pm (Q&A with cinematographer, Lílis Soares)
Thursday, June 1 at 6:00pm

The Pan-African Festival of Algiers
William Klein, 1969, Algeria, 120m
English and French with English subtitles

This documentary explores both the politics and music of the First Pan-African Cultural Festival. Third-world solidarity was much in fashion in 1969, when the festival was held. Many of the interviewees hold forth about colonialism and neocolonialism and the need for exploited countries to stick together. Held in Algeria, the filmmakers were able to interview Eldridge Cleaver and other Black Panthers during their exile there. Among the film’s musical highlights is a performance by Miriam Makeba, followed by an interview with her.
Co-presented by Africa Is a Country
Thursday, June 1 at 8:15pm (Q&A with writer and historian of Algerian cinema, Ahmed Bedjaou)

Animated films by Cilia Sawadogo

Total Runtime = 57m
Short animated films for all ages by Canadian-Burkinabé-German filmmaker, Cilia Sawadogo.

The Tree of Spirits
Cilia Sawadogo, 2005, Burkina Faso/Canada, 45m
French with English subtitles
In the desert savannah, Kodou and Tano meet Ayoka, the caretaker of a century-old tree that a contractor wants to cut down. Kodou, guided by Ayoka, seeks his ancestors to ask for their help. Tano stays at the tree to protect it. But the ancestors can only advise him; the children must find the solution themselves. They discover that the gigantic baobab is a door between two worlds. The spirit of the rain, trapped by the spirit of the drought, can’t come back to Earth. Without the sacred baobab, the road to Earth will remain closed forever, and nature’s balance will be shattered.

Christopher Changes His Name
Cilia Sawadogo, 2000, Canada, 6m
English
Christopher, a little boy who doesn’t want to be called Christopher anymore. Such a common name! When Aunty Gail from Trinidad tells him a story about a tiger, Christopher changes his name to Tiger. But then he finds a better name. When he has trouble cashing a birthday check, he realizes maybe he should stick with his original name…or maybe not?

The Cora Player
Cilia Sawadogo, 1996, Canada, 7m
English and French with English subtitles
A girl confronts the wrath of her father when she challenges tradition by falling in love with a boy from the griot caste.
Sunday, May 28 at 2:00pm

Shorts Program: Ghana New Wave

Total Runtime = 101m
A selection of bold contemporary short films from Ghana.

Yaa
Amartei Armar, 2022, Ghana/France, 20m
Twi with English subtitles
New York Premiere
Three defining moments in Ghana’s history are reflected in the experiences of three generations of women, whose souls are unknowingly connected through space, time, and ancestral heritage. As each of them discovers where they are, seeks to find meaning in their lives, and questions what the future holds, one thing is for sure: hope must prevail.

Textures
Adebayo Mikael Calandra Achode, 2022, Ghana/UK, 12m
New York Premiere
Yaa and Nana have returned to Ghana to make their dreams come true. When an unexpected argument breaks in the middle of the night, all certainties are called in question.

Moon Over Aburi
Sheila Nortley and Anniwaa Buachie, 2022, Ghana/UK, 20m
New York Premiere
Two strangers, a man and a woman, each unfold a shared story. For one, a mission; the other, a secret. Through each of their experiences, we see how societal pressures continue to ripple through childhood and beyond.

Confirmation
Nana Duffuor, 2023, Ghana/USA, 12m
U.S. Premiere
Amid rising social and political pressure in Ghana, a God-fearing mother wrestles with her son’s sexual identity.

The Golden Seeds
David Boanuh, 2022, Ghana, 19m
New York Premiere
A story of hope, dreams, and hardships: the cocoa industry, as told by the farmers themselves. Utilizing a unique, West African viewpoint, Ghanaian filmmaker David Boanuh provides insight into their stories.

Ampe: Leap into the Sky, Black Girl
Claudia Owusu and Ife Oluwamuyide, 2022, Ghana/USA, 18m
Set in the sister cities of Accra, Ghana, and Columbus, Ohio,Ampe: Leap into the Sky, Black Girl is a rhythmic love letter to Black girlhood across the African diaspora. Through the lens of the Ghanaian traditional jumping and clapping game, Ampe, the film takes us on a journey of sisterhood, loyalty, and nostalgia in a space created for us by us.
Sunday, May 28 at 3:30pm (Q&A with Ife Oluwamuyide, Nana Duffuor, and Sheila Nortley)

Shorts Program: FilmAfrica Shorts

Total Runtime = 117m
Short films from Africa and the diaspora including a selection from African Film Festival’s National Traveling Series.

Frieda
Tisa Chigaga, 2022, USA, 8m
English and Bemba with English subtitles
An older undocumented migrant is summarily dismissed from her housekeeping position. Cast into desperate uncertainty, she roams the city in despair. 

Mma Moeketsi 
Reabetswe Moeti, 2018, South Africa, 25m
Sotho with English subtitles
Based on true events, this film recounts a 2012 massacre in which a group of South African mineworkers went on a wage increase strike that led to what would become a national tragedy that saw 34 miners being brutally killed by the police.

Botlhale / Intelligent
Reabetswe Moeti, 2022, South Africa, 35m
Setswana with English subtitles
Botlhale, who’s mentally ill, makes new friends and finds love when he’s institutionalized. The friends plan an escape to Chicken Heart, a fast food joint, where they’ll live out their fantasies of being high society people, but their escape day collides with the shutting down of their home, where their lives come face to face with tragedy and death.

Detroit We Dey
Ozi Uduma, 2023, USA, 10m
New York Premiere
Detroit We Dey examines the history of Detroit social clubs founded by a community of Igbo-Nigerians in the 70s and 80s, and questions how the next generation will carry its traditions into the future.

Mr. Bold
Aiman Morounfolu Mimiko, 2023, Nigeria, 14m
New York Premiere
A young Nigerian boy attempts to connect with his older brother by desecrating his neighborhood mosque.

‎Egúngún / Masquerade
Olive Nwosu, 2021, Nigeria/UK, 14m
English and Yoruba with English subtitles
Salewa must return home for her mother’s funeral, to Lagos, a place where she once had to hide herself. At the funeral, she runs into an important person in her past, as she’s forced to go in search of her own peace. Egúngún (Masquerade) is a meditation on home, on memory, and identity – on the many versions of ourselves that haunt us.

Precious Hair & Beauty
John Ogunmuyiwa, 2021, UK, 11m
An ode to the mundanity and madness of the high street, told through the window of an African hair salon.
Co-presented by Be Reel Black Cinema Club
Monday, May 29 at 8:30pm (Q&A with Ozi Uduma, Tisa Chigaga, Aiman Morounfolu Mimiko, and producer Kaelo Iyizoba)
Wednesday, May 31 at 5:30pm

AFRICAN FILM FESTIVAL, INC.
Since 1990, African Film Festival, Inc. (AFF) has bridged the divide between postcolonial Africa and the American public through the powerful medium of film and video. AFF’s unique place in the international arts community is distinguished not only by leadership in festival management, but also by a comprehensive approach to the advocacy of African film and culture. AFF established the New York African Film Festival (NYAFF) in 1993 with Film at Lincoln Center. The New York African Film Festival is presented annually by the African Film Festival, Inc. and Film at Lincoln Center, in association with Brooklyn Academy of Music and Maysles Cinema. AFF also produces a series of local, national, and international programs throughout the year. More information about AFF can be found on the web at www.africanfilmny.org. You can follow AFF at @africanfilmfest on Twitter and Instagram.

FILM AT LINCOLN CENTER
Film at Lincoln Center is dedicated to supporting the art and elevating the craft of cinema and enriching film culture.

Film at Lincoln Center fulfills its mission through the programming of festivals, series, retrospectives, and new releases; the publication of Film Comment; and the presentation of podcasts, talks, special events, and artist initiatives. Since its founding in 1969, this nonprofit organization has brought the celebration of American and international film to the world-renowned Lincoln Center arts complex, making the discussion and appreciation of cinema accessible to a broad audience and ensuring that it remains an essential art form for years to come.

Film at Lincoln Center receives generous, year-round support from the National Endowment for the Arts and the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature. For more information, visit www.filmlinc.org and follow @filmlinc on Twitter and Instagram.

MAYSLES CINEMA
Maysles Cinema, at Maysles Documentary Center (MDC), founded by the late documentary filmmaker and pioneer Albert Maysles (1926-2015) in 2008, is dedicated to the exhibition and discussion of documentary films. The Cinema is committed to a democratic experience, one where filmmakers are asked to attend the screenings of their work, and audiences have the opportunity to actively engage the films, subjects in the films, experts, and each other in post-screening forums. Coupled with its scheduled programming, Maysles encourages the programming participation of local social and cultural organizations to deepen community involvement and provide exposure for under-represented social issues and overlooked artists and their work. For more information, visit maysles.org.

BROOKLYN ACADEMY OF MUSIC
BAM Rose Cinemas (BRC) opened in 1998 to offer Brooklyn audiences an alternative to the standard multiplex, screening independent films that might otherwise not play in the borough and making BAM the only performing arts center in the country with two mainstage theaters and a multiplex cinema. In July 1999, beginning with a series celebrating the work of Spike Lee, BAMcinématek was born as Brooklyn’s only daily year-round repertory film program. BAMcinématek presents classic films, premieres, festivals, and retrospectives, often with special appearances by filmmakers, actors, and critics. For more information, visit bam.org.

For press inquiries regarding African Film Festival, Inc., please contact:
Cheryl Duncan, Cheryl Duncan & Company Inc., cheryl@cdcprnews.com
African Film Festival, Inc., press@africanfilmny.org

For press inquiries regarding Film at Lincoln Center, please contact:
John Kwiatkowski, Film at Lincoln Center, JKwiatkowski@filmlinc.org
Eva Tooley, Film at Lincoln Center, ETooley@filmlinc.org
Rogers & Cowan PMK, filmatlincolncenterpr@rogersandcowanpmk.com

The 30th-anniversary edition of the New York African Film Festival will be presented in collaboration with Film at Lincoln Center (FLC – May 10 – 16), Maysles Cinema (May 19 – 22), and BAM (Brooklyn Academy of Music – May 26 – June 1).

The full festival line-up of screenings and events is to be announced soon.

Safi Faye is no stranger to Fad’jal, having spent her youth and young adulthood there before she moved to Dakar to become a schoolteacher. In 1966, she met anthropologist-filmmaker Jean Rouch (1917–2004) at the First World Festival of Negro Arts and, soon after, took a leading role in his film Petit à petit (Little by Little; 1971). A year later, in 1972, she moved to Paris to pursue an interdisciplinary education in anthropology at the Sorbonne and filmmaking at the Ecole nationale supérieure Louis Lumière. Faye’s approach to ethnographic documentary film differed from Rouch’s as they entered the communities they were filming from opposing standpoints. While Rouch’s perspective is that of an outside observer, Safi’s is from within. Safi explains, “I have underscored the rural problem in every way. I have been unrelenting because I am from the peasantry; I am not from the city.”¹ On the contrary, Rouch arrives to the work solely as an observer. Faye’s emphasis on her background is the foundation of her approach, prompting her to occasionally participate in the form of a voice-over, building the larger narrative,² and attenuating the distance between her and her collaborators that is often primary in ethnographic film practices. Faye films the community she is a part of, employing an “observational mode to show inaccessibility,” and serving as the mediator between the viewer and the people she films.³ This kind of double vision ensures that she can serve “as both participant and observer.”⁴ Following her participation in Petit à petit, Faye shot her first film, a ten-minute short titled La Passante (The Passerby; 1972), in Paris. She later returned to her rural hometown to create her first feature-length film, the black-and-white Kaddu Beykat (Letter from My Village; 1975), making her the first woman from sub-Saharan Africa to direct a commercially distributed feature film. This project was followed by Fad’jal; Goob na ñu (The Harvest Is In; 1979), the second in her growing collection of intimate films merging documentary and fiction through interviews and slow captures focusing on everyday activities in rural communities. Selbé et tant d’autres (Selbé: One Among Many; 1982) follows in this practice, using documentary film as a tool for ethnographic study and pushing a new interactive form of documentary film that centers the voice of women living in rural communities.

Cinema by Francophone Africans was born alongside the independence movements of the 1960s.⁵ Filmmakers like Djibril Diop Mambéty (1945–1998), Ousmane Sembène (1923–2007), Mahama Johnson Traoré (1942–2010), and their peers in Mali, Souleymane Cissé (born 1940) and Abderrahmane Sissako (born 1961) to name a few, used the camera to challenge the existing stereotypical representations of their experiences, a practice evident in Safi Faye’s corpus. For Faye and her peers, cinema presented the opportunity to counter the ingrained colonial narratives of African societies due to its possibility for widespread distribution. Unfortunately, many of these films remain inaccessible to cinemas on the continent, ultimately beyond the reach of African audiences despite a collective desire to revisit these narratives. Selbé et tant d’autres is no exception.⁶ Because such films are not more publicly accessible, the stories they convey do not remain in Senegalese cultural memory.

In Selbé et tant d’autres, we hear the voice of Faye, who is away from the lens as she interviews Selbé—speaking to the interactive documentary’s collaborative and nonhierarchical approach. This decision to center Selbé’s voice “contrasts radically with the silence and/or absence of African women characters in Western images of the continent.”⁷ Despite this focus, Faye has rejected the interpretation that her films are solely about placing women at the center of her stories. As she explains, “Women alone cannot live in Africa. Women live in a community, and I cannot eliminate the community.”⁸ Her commitment is to narratives that are most prevalent outside the city, and to characters who address both local concerns and the larger agricultural and economic policies that are contributing to their difficulties. As we watch Selbé and the other women work, we are drawn back to the title, “Among Others,” a reminder that Selbé’s story can be applied to other women who share her background.

From the onset of the film, Faye’s camera, relying on both sonic and visual repetition, follows Selbé and other women from the village as they go about their daily routines without pause. Her camera is static, often at a distance, in order to get a full frame of the subjects and their environment. The women are fishing, collecting salt, preparing meals, unloading wood, breastfeeding, making clay pots, in transit from one place to another—never at rest. It is unclear if these are all the chores undertaken in one day, or a compilation of what’s accomplished over various afternoons. When Faye gets close to her collaborators, she focuses on the repetitive details of their labor, on their hands in continuous action, on their routine gestures. These moments are at times accompanied by Selbé’s singing, “There is no respite for the unfortunate ones.” In one repeating scene, Selbé sits in a domestic setting, breastfeeding her child, as she prepares a meal. Faye frequently returns to this scene with minor variations, often with Selbé surrounded by and engaging with her children. The repetition of this portrait throughout the film serves as a reminder of the cyclical, crucial, and multitasking labor that Selbé takes on.

As the narrative unfolds, we learn of the pivotal and unconventional roles women have taken on to support their families. A woman other than Selbé stands, refusing to be silent or passive as she directly addresses her husband, explaining the issues affecting their domestic life. Faye’s camera remains distant as this woman unloads wood, a job she expects her husband to help with. She continues the work alone, airing her frustrations as he sits and watches. Faye then leads us back to Selbé, who is engaged in yet another chore. Selbé tells us about having left home for eight months to work as a launderer in Dakar. In her absence, her own mother cared for three of Selbé’s children. Selbé returned to village gossip that she was in the city to meet men, which she immediately dismisses as “nothing but gossip and lies.” This example directly ties back to Selbé’s song, “There is no respite for the unfortunate ones.” Selbé has gone to another village in search of opportunities. Faye presents us with women who, in her words, “are in charge of their own destiny. And rely on their own strength.”⁹ They take initiative, maintain supportive relationships with one another, and are creative in collecting and maintaining resources.

In one of the most extended takes in the film, Faye’s camera turns to the men of the village, who are gathered by the beating of a drum. We are given a wide view of the group, emphasizing their multitude. As the men discuss taxes, Faye maintains her camera’s perspective, occasionally honing in on a few faces. One of the leading characters notes that if the men cannot pay, “the taxman” will arrive to collect their belongings and sell them until the debts are paid.¹⁰ He clarifies that although they have received fertilizer and seeds from the government, the taxes remain due. This scene connects directly to one of Faye’s earlier voice-overs, in which she reveals, “There’s no agricultural work for the men in the countryside.” Selbé later corroborates this statement. She explains that she has not seen anything from her husband besides his yearly harvest, noting it “barely feeds us for a month. It doesn’t rain enough.”

While Faye acknowledges the internal conflicts that affect the village, she also points directly to the external threats—as in her 1975 film Kaddu Beykat (Letter from My Village), in which village members speak extensively about the government oversight that has resulted in the conditions they face. In addition to Selbé sharing her frustration with her husband, Faye’s voice-over adds, “Economic tragedies, droughts, hunger, unemployment, and tomorrow’s insecurities all extend into family dramas, affecting both men and women.” Faye draws a connection between the established government policies and colonial farming methods and the poverty and limited employment opportunities faced by those living in rural communities. Although addressed more explicitly in Kaddu Beykat, the ongoing policies and isolation of rural villages reinforce the disconnect in applying laws that ensure the rural community’s well-being.

Toward the film’s end, Selbé continues, “Farm until exhaustion. God, why have you chosen this for me? Find a future for our children.” Selbé et tant d’autres ends with Selbé clearing the fields in case of rain, another task that her husband has neglected to do. At first, she is joined by two other characters, but eventually she is standing alone, her body moving swiftly. As the credits begin, Faye’s camera stays with Selbé at work—without offering clarity on when this work will end. Through this film that centers Selbé’s voice, Faye allows us, the audience, to keep a record of her subject’s life and the nature of women’s work in the village of Fad’jal. Over thirty minutes, Selbé’s voice carries us from the beginning to the end, through intimate observation of one woman’s seemingly endless chores. We learn of her social role and economic burden as she sustains her family. Safi Faye and Selbé allow us a look into their community, drawing attention to the local issues that fester, while also alluding to the broader governmental structures that exacerbate the problems. Faye’s corpus is defined by its unique ethnographic excavation of her home, and Selbé et tant d’autres is no exception.

This article originally appeared on post – notes on art in a global context – MoMA: https://post.moma.org/safi-faye-selbe-et-tant-dautres/

In March 2015, students across South Africa continued work begun by a generation that sacrificed secondary-school education to fight Apartheid. The Rhodes Must Fall movement galvanized efforts to decolonize curricula. That summer, students across the United States joined the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement, raising questions that White and other not-Black people might not see Black victims of police violence because Black perspectives have been erased from education. They also lack knowledge about Black contributions to ending slavery and winning civil rights. U.S. presidents Abraham Lincoln and Lyndon Johnson signed anti-slavery and anti-racism legislation. They did not initiate it, yet they are included in school and university curricula. Black contributions to civil rights and to arts and sciences are not.[1]

With social media, student protests become memes, asking administrators and faculty a central question: “Why is your history part of the core curriculum and mine an elective?” They cite Simone de Beauvoir, Angela Davis, and Paulo Freire, refusing to accept what Jonathan Harris’s painting Critical Race Theory (2021) makes literal: a whitewashing of Black history. A White man rolls white paint over images of activists Harriet Tubman, Malcolm X, and Martin Luther King, Jr.[2] Some university administrators struggle to understand connections between “our [university] curricula” and “their [police] violence.” Racism is always elsewhere. Many students and faculty, however, experience and witness palpable, tangible, and undeniable connections between curriculum and violence, often on a daily basis.

This article questions why film educators—alongside critics, distributors, exhibitors, and makers—often describe films and filmmakers as being nominated or winning an Oscar without examining how the awards define merit. The Oscars are one example of White-Western-serving film institutions, including BAFTA (British Academy of Film and Television Arts) and festivals, including Berlin, Cannes, IDFA (International Documentary Festival Amsterdam), Sundance, and Venice. They must “fall” in the sense that Sabelo Ndlovu-Gatsheni argues Rhodes must fall in “a dual process of both deprovincializing Africa, and in turn provincializing Europe.”[3] Film educators need to provincialize White-Western-serving institutions and de-provincialize a large number of not-White and not-Western ones that define merit in different terms.[4] The Oscars and other White-Western-serving institutions largely define “merit” in ways that disempower and even delegitimize perspectives that call into question their power. Education needs to prepare students for a world that is not only more interdependent, but also more divisive with the rise of nationalism and more dangerous with the climate crisis, income inequality, and pandemics. Since university “diversity and inclusion” schemes can be counterproductive, film educators—graduate teaching assistants, instructors, lecturers, professors—can compensate in courses and curricula.

Institutional responses can add to the problem

Decolonizing film has a long history.[5] Ella Shohat and Robert Stam proposed polycentrism as a mode to organize the field, which takes on a new urgency after the Cold War’s three options (capitalism, socialism, non-alignment) have been reduced to one: neoliberalism.[6] When U.S. film education emphasizes technical achievement, star system, and popular genres, while ignoring labor conditions and trade agreements, it allows a commercial industry to set the terms. Despite increased screen presence of not-White characters in Hollywood films and of not-Western films in introductory textbooks, unacknowledged bias continues to structure film education, which cannot be corrected with administrator-run syllabi workshops that revamp old curricula. [See appendix for films that most often appear on syllabi.] Adding 1980s Hong Kong and 1990s Bollywood cinema, for example, only make the ongoing exclusion of Chinese and South Asian film history more conspicuous. It avoids confronting criteria that disqualify films and filmmakers from introductions to the field.  

Usha Iyer proposes “radical praxis from multiple locations” that rejects “a one-time or a one-size-fits-all fix” for “a proliferation of demands, manifestoes, and countermanifestos that become impossible to ignore,” particularly in universities where we need “an undercommons of killjoys, a coalition of complainers that chip away, course after course, at occupying academic structures.”[7] Locations need to resist being reduced to quantitative data on administrative spreadsheets. Reframing film history as arthouse, Bollywood, Hallyuwood, Hollywood, and Nollywoood films, for example, still excludes the vast majority of perspectives. It focuses only on feature-length narrative films for commercial markets, underscoring how representational diversity and inclusion appears to solve problems but thwarts decolonizing knowledge, especially when faculty are unaware of structural biases within each of these industries.

When such issues are not addressed in education, they disseminate into the world, shaping film criticism, distribution, and exhibition. General audiences use the Oscars as shorthand for merit. Oscar-awarded or nominated films often appear on the covers of introductory textbooks that are unmarked introductions to White-Western filmmaking. Educators can reframe teaching to emphasize that Oscars are not the universal or global definition of merit, but a particular and local one. Rather than an unequivocal accolade, an Oscar can suggest pandering to a White-Western industry or betraying a not-White and/or not-Western community. Such an idea might be shocking to Hollywood élites, but it is one that students need to consider.

Academy apologists define the Oscars as industry awards with holding no obligation towards social injustice. For them, Hollywood is “just entertainment” or “just showbiz”—and everyone “loves” Hollywood films. They ignore unfair advantages and unearned privilege. Hollywood thrives on the illusion of competition, and the Oscars are designed to convince audiences that Hollywood films are objectively better than everyone else’s. The awards even include the category of Foreign-language/International film, which signals merit for films that don’t merit inclusion in the awards’ unmarked categories.

Diversity programs can whitewash the status quo

Academy president Cheryl Boone Issacs claims to expand membership and implement quotas “aggressively,” yet Oscar’s new “diversity” criteria on “representation and inclusion” is inadequate.[8] If the Academy was serious, it would have acted when legal immigration expanded in 1965 or when Affirmative Action became law in 1973.[9] Rehabilitating the Oscars whitewashes impressions. Maggie Hennefeld finds “notoriously racist films” can “easily satisfy the new ‘Standard A: On-Screen Representation, Themes and Narratives’” that “merely requires that a film’s actors or subject matter promote the visibility of an underrepresented group, as if ‘visibility’ were inherently positive.”[10] “Visibility” is representational inclusion that can be tokenistic and even reinforce negative stereotypes. “Simply put, these diversity indulgences are largely a publicity stunt,” Hennefeld concludes; “They’ll be used to exonerate future nominees from accusations of discrimination while providing cover for the Academy itself.”[11]

Change is nonetheless decried. Kirstie Alley called it a “dictatorial” tactic to curb “freedom of UNBRIDLED artistry.”[12] Michael Caine suggested not-White actors need to “be patient” and wait their turn. “Of course, it will come,” he said; “It took me years to get an Oscar, years.”[13] By universalizing his White experience, he imagines racism no longer exists. Charlotte Rampling believed boycotting the Oscars for its racism is “racist against whites.”[14] Catherine Deneuve found Tarana Burke’s #MeToo movement to end sexual harassment—or vigorous and confident “flirting,” as she characterized it—went too far.[15] Alley, Cain, Rampling, and Deneuve have no issues with a system that benefits Whiteness.

Focusing on what the Oscars exclude detracts from what they include—what is meant by “best.” Black actors win when they portray racists stereotypes. As Mammy in Gone with the Wind (USA, 1939; dir. Victor Fleming), Hattie McDaniel was the first to win one in 1940. Her win broke no barriers for others. She was an outlier. Eugene Franklin Wong describes racial segregation and stratification that determine who appears together on screen and who can work together on set.[16] Nancy Wang Yuen describes it as “reel inequity.”[17] “In allowing the film industry and Hollywood to disregard Title VII [of the Civil Rights Act of 1964],” notes Latonja Sinckler, “society has allowed these industries to perpetuate a system that favors one race over others.”[18] Segregation and inequality are not solved by representational diversity and inclusion. Hollywood inserts not-White actors in non-stereotyped supporting roles—judges, police officers, and teachers—that serve a White-dominated system in what Sharon Willis calls “guest figures.”[19] Hollywood films appear diverse and inclusive while social structures of Whiteness remain.

Over Oscar’s 93 years, only 14 Black women and 24 Black men have been nominated for leading actor awards. Only six have been nominated as directors. Oscar myths dictate that exceptional not-White and not-Western people will “rise” to its merit. #OscarsSoWhite founder April Reign describes the awards as less meritocracy than popularity contest. Academy members are not required to screen films before voting and award films and filmmakers that reflect their particular ideas about filmmaking and the world. By 2014 with over 86 years and 344 awards for acting, Oscar awarded only 24 (or 7%) to not-White actors; moreover, “Arabs or Muslims are often portrayed as terrorists, African Americans as criminals such as drug dealers, Latinos as criminals such as gang members, and Whites as victims or heroes.”[20] Such statistics are expected. Until recently, Academy voting members were 94% White and 76% male with an average age of 63, that is, “older and more dude-heavy than just about any place in America [sic] and Whiter than all but seven states.”[21] Membership reflects social power asymmetries, but even representational diversity and inclusion among membership is not a guaranteed solution. Some not-White and/or not-Western people are racist, and some women are sexist. Identities and politics align in complex ways. Affirmative Action disproportionately benefits White women because it flattens social difference to allows the most powerful to exploit systems.

Olúfémi Táíwò describes such appropriations and exploitations of “identity politics” as a “tactic of performing symbolic identity politics to pacify protestors without enacting material reform”—what he calls “elite capture.”[22] Institutions use diversity and inclusion most effectively to whitewash their own histories.[23] Educational institutions employ representational categories without challenging disciplinary structures, which can be an counterproductive as hiring neoliberal economists from the former Third World rather than hiring Third Worldist economists. They maintain a status quo.

Feigned ignorance is still racism

When asked about “the most insidious and insulting type of racism,” Wendall Pierce mentioned “‘the feigned ignorance’ of white industry members regarding finding talented directors, actors, and writers of color.”[24] Comparably, Rosie Perez considers her “biggest struggle [in Hollywood] has been navigating through other people’s shortcomings,” especially “other people’s bigotry, racism—and specifically the ones that don’t understand that they are bigots or racists.”[25] Hollywood Reporter offers candid insights into what Academy voters think but won’t say publicly. About Get Out! (USA, 2017; dir. Jordan Peele), one confessed: “what bothered me afterwards was that instead of focusing on the fact that this was an entertaining little horror movie that made quite a bit of money, they started trying to suggest it had deeper meaning than it does, and, as far as I’m concerned, they played the race card, and that really turned me off.”[26] (Sexualized racism is a theme that the film actually addresses.) The member’s insecurity over Peele’s film both making “quite a bit of money” and containing “deeper meaning” would be amusing, were it not so racist.

The same member felt uncomfortable that Daniel Kaluuya, “who is not from the United States, was giving us a lecture on racism in America [sic] and how black lives matter, and I thought, ‘What does this have to do with Get Out? They’re trying to make me think that if I don’t vote for this movie, I’m a racist.’ I was really offended.” Academy members do like some foreigners. They admire Winston Churchill, subject of a biopic that year. He is a hero in Britain and villain in India, where his extraction of food contributed to a famine killing millions.[27] Critics, educators, and scholars need to ask themselves whether they feign ignorance that such comments are not part of how Oscar merit is determined.

Such scrutiny is not new. People magazine declare a “Hollywood blackout” in 1996. “The 68th Academy Awards, hosted by Whoopi Goldberg and produced by Quincy Jones, were two weeks away, and the magazine used its audience of nearly 4 million subscribers to announce a shocking discovery,” explains Esther Breger; “Of the 166 Oscar nominees that year, only one was black.”[28] The Black nominee was Dianne Houston for Tuesday Morning Ride (USA, 1995). Jesse Jackson organized a protest outside ABC affiliates, broadcasting the ceremony in Chicago, Los Angeles, and Washington. He was stigmatized as a troublemaker.

Jacqueline Keeler defines Whites-only nominations for acting in 2016, repeating 2015, as a “symptom of Hollywood’s racism.”[29] She finds “no Oscar nominations for Native American actors or filmmakers or writers” in the award’s 86 years.[30] Oscars recognize Indigenous people when they appear in films by Whites, such as Alejandro González Iñárritu’s The Revenant (USA/Hong Kong/Taiwan, 2015). Because he is Mexican, Iñárritu’s nomination makes the Oscars appear inclusive. The Oscars adore the “three amigos”—Iñárritu, Guillermo del Toro, and Alfonso Cuarón—who, Deborah Shaw notes, make films outside México yet “take on the role of advocates and ambassadors for the national film industry.”[31] They win Best Director constantly, helping Oscar deflect criticisms. “If Cuarón were a white American or European,” noted Jorge Cotte about Roma (México/USA, 2018), “a depiction of an indigenous woman that shored up so many parts of his family’s life would have been even more vulnerable to critical eyes.”[32]

Feigned ignorance extends to not noticing that Oscars rewards Whites and Westerners for appropriating not-White and not-Western stories, such as Gandhi (UK/India/USA, 1982; dir. Richard Attenborough) and Slumdog Millionaire (UK/USA, 2008; dir. Danny Boyle). The films refocus attention back on White filmmakers. Yasmina Price argues White filmmakers make neocolonial films about Africa when trying to critique neocolonialism.[33] Occasional awards go to not-White and not-Western filmmakers for films about White-Western people, notably Ang Lee’s Brokeback Mountain (USA/Canada, 2002) and Zhoé Zhao’s Nomadland (USA, 2020).[34] Feigned ignorance extends to the kinds of not-Western stories that Oscars notices. With its precocious young girl, The Present (UK/Palestine, 2020; dir. Farah Nabulsi) did, much as Wadjda (Germany/Saudi Arabia, 2012; dir. Haifaa Al Mansour) had. Only Arab girls, who appear to act like White girls by defying what White women consider Arab and/or Muslim patriarchy, win Oscar nominations.

“Universal” stories are another form of racism and imperialism

The longest serving presidents of Hollywood’s trade association, the Motion Picture Association, William Hayes and Jack Valenti, inaugurated industry propaganda that Hollywood films are the best in the world because their stories are supposedly universal. John Tomlinson argues that “claims to universality, in short, nearly always relate to some project of domination: it is very rare that the model of ‘essential humanity’ is taken from an alien culture.”[35] Hollywood’s self-definition of its stories as universal functions like a “cultural bomb,” as Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o describes “annihilat[ing] a people’s belief in their names, their languages, in their environment, in their heritage of struggle, in their unity, in their capacities and ultimately in themselves.[36] He argues that universalism is imperialism, making its victims “see their past as one wasteland of non-achievement” and “makes them want to distance themselves from that wasteland.”[37] “Amidst this wasteland,” he notes, “imperialism presents itself as the cure.” Chinua Achebe defined universalism as escapism, asking: “if [African] writers should opt for such escapism, who is to meet the challenge [of decolonizing the mind]?”[38]

Appeals to universalism naturalize racism and imperialism. Universalism guides Oscar’s awards for not-White and not-Western films, generally favoring those that tell so-called universal (i.e., whitewashed) stories. In 2020, Bong Joon-ho’s Gisaengchung/Parasite (South Korea, 2019) won Best Picture, allegedly transcending its particularity as Korean or Asian to become universal. Bong won Best Director but was unimpressed, as was Youn Yuh-jung, who won Best Supporting Actress.[39] The Academy recognized Parasite partly due to transnational corporate structures.[40] Parasite’s win raised concerns that it diminished media attention to not-White actors, but Brian Hu argues that Korean American communities created a U.S. market for Korean films.[41] Journalists speculated that Parasite’s win marked a watershed moment, as they had two decades earlier when Ngo foo chong lung/Wo hu cang long/Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (USA/China/Hong Kong/Taiwan, 2000; dir. Ang Lee) won Best Foreign-language Film. Different generations experience their own exhilaration. Hollywood lures with fantasies that the watershed moments are real.

Henry Aray observes the Academy favors “high-income countries,” noting that “50 out of 72 Oscars for [foreign-language film] have been awarded to EU [European Union] countries.”[42] Promoted by Oscar awards to local productions in this category, high-income White-majority states offer potentially lucrative markets for Hollywood films. Aray finds Oscar nominations less helpful in establishing local film industries in medium- or low-income countries.[43] Academy bureaucracy works against not-Western films. Oscar’s bylaws include requirements such as “paid admission in a commercial motion picture theater in Los Angeles County.” Documentary features require seven-day commercial runs in New York. Countries are limited to “only one picture,” giving small states like Germany, France, Japan, and South Korea an unfair advantage over large ones like China, India, and Nigeria. Moreover, transnational funding renders the archaic term “international” meaningless. France’s Unifrance boasts “almost a quarter of the 93 films submitted by the candidate countries” nominated for Best International Feature in 2022 were French co-productions.[44]

Oscar-nominated films require high production values and stories that do not require understanding by cultural content. Paul McDonald finds Disney’s acquisition of Miramax in 1993 contributed to an “Indiewoodization” of foreign-language film, driven by minimizing risk and maximizing profit.[45] The category “foreign” essentially became a way for Hollywood distributors (aka “studios”) to outsource production. Harvey Weinstein earned the moniker “Harvey Scissorhands” for his extensive reediting of “foreign” films.[46] It might be more useful to teach students about different filmmaking practices and histories. Lampooned by Western critics, Nigeria’s film industry Nollywood is now the world’s second largest.Audiences were fine with lower production values in early Nollywood films since the stories were Nigerian. Nollywood rejected the racism and imperialism of Hollywood’s supposed universal stories, though it also colonizes internally, privileging the “international” English-language films over ones in “regional” languages of Hausa, Igbo, Yoruba, and others.

Not-Western filmmaking is beyond Oscar expertise

“The yearly Oscar ceremonies inscribe Hollywood’s arrogant provincialism,” note Stam and Shohat; “the audience is global yet the product promoted is almost always American, the ‘rest of the world’ being corralled into the ghetto of the ‘foreign film.”[47] Only 22 films without English dialogues or U.S. funding have been nominated for Best Picture. Martin Scorsese’s World Cinema Project restores (feature-length, mostly narrative) films from around the world, yet his personal “best 125 films of all time” includes only four by not-Western filmmakers, all Japanese, and none directed by women.[48] Scorsese is not an outlier.[49]

Hollywood maximizes profit by protecting its home market (Canada and United States) and opening other markets by aggressively advocating for so-called free trade. After agriculture, petroleum, weapons, and pharmaceuticals, Hollywood entertainment is a substantial portion of U.S. exports. During the 1993 General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) negotiations, United States argued that films were just products like automobile and missiles. France argued for a “cultural exception” since film held cultural value and should be exempted from free trade.[50]

At the same time, the U.S. government acknowledges films are more than products, having cultural value as soft power and propaganda. In 1927, the Motion Picture Department within the Department of Commerce was established, so films could act as “silent salesmen” for other U.S. products.[51] Under Will H. Hayes, the Motion Picture Producers and Directors Association (MPPDA, later MPAA) secured State Department intervention in overseas markets in the 1920s.[52] Indeed, the MPPDA’s subsidiary, the Motion Picture Export Association of America, was often called the “Little State Department.”[53] Synergies of industry and state promote and export U.S. national exceptionalism today through Film International and American Documentary Showcase.

Hollywood has prioritized overseas markets since the 1920s, but its films are not consumed because they are “better,” as industry heads insist. Hollywood partnered with the U.S. government, particularly during the 1940s after European and Japanese film industries were destroyed by war. Hollywood opposes protectionist policies, such as national import quotas or taxes. At the same time, the U.S. exhibition market is de facto protected by distributors and exhibitors. Nevertheless, Hollywood discredits foreign competition with belittling epithets, such as “Hollywood on the Nile” (Cairo) or “Hollywood of the East” (Shanghai, then Hong Kong).[54] Filmfare is belittled as the “Indian Oscars”; Premio Ariel, the “Mexican Oscars.” Even fellow Westerners cannot escape Oscar’s shadow: Césars become “French Oscars”; Ophirs, “Israeli Oscars.”

The Oscars prioritizes form over content to train audiences to dismiss films without Hollywood’s production values and resources. Julio Garcia Espinosa argued that “perfect cinema—technically and artistically masterful—is almost always reactionary cinema,” perfectly characterizing Oscar ideas of merit.[55] Prejudice can be internalized. Satyajit Ray criticized Bombay’s film industry for imitating Hollywood. He refused to accept “high technical polish” as merit.[56] His Pather Panchali (India, 1955) was awarded “best human document” at Cannes and applauded as “dramatized documentary” and “timeless humanism” at the Flaherty Film Seminar.[57] These institutions ignored the merit of Ray’s meticulous storyboarding, adaptation of Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay’s novel, and use of Ravi Shankar’s music. They ignored his engagements with Vittorio de Sica, Jean Renoir, and Billy Wilder, perhaps presuming a Bengali filmmaker would not know them, and his references to Indian arts. The Oscars only seem notice not-Western filmmakers when they prioritize legibility to White-Western audiences.

Alternative modes exist. Mahen Bonetti and Carlos A. Gutiérrez programmed African and Latin American films as “South of the Other” for the Flaherty Seminar.[58] They “othered” the Global North. They invited filmmakers whose work exceeded the neoliberal globalist imagination, including Dante Cerano, Ximena Cuevas, Theo Eshetu, Mahamat Saleh Haroun, and Moussa Sene Absa, whose films could not be mistaken for documentary or ethnographic film, as Ray’s Pather Panchali had been. However, the Flaherty Seminar and Cannes are relatively unknown by many audiences, who associate merit with the Oscars. Audiences do not understand that the Oscars’ raison d’être is to promote Hollywood, thus rendering it unqualified to evaluate not-Western filmmaking.

South of the Other:

Oscar “merit” hides Hollywood’s (unmarked) power

Oscar is a colloquial expression for the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ awards for “artistic and technical merit.” Verified by accountants, Academy bylaws are classical Hollywood-style fantasies of meritocracy that exclude the context of inequality. Hollywood myths of competition and meritocracy also undercut organized labor. The Oscars were designed to transform labor into “arts and sciences,” short-circuiting workers’ protection by unions and guilds.[59] In Hollywood’s golden era, studio heads thwarted efforts to regulate the industry. The film industry moved from New Jersey to California in the 1910s was partly a maneuver around antitrust laws. Hollywood later bypassed the Paramount Decree (1948), outlawing the vertical integration of production, distribution, and exhibition. Hollywood is historically anti-competition. The studios worked to camouflage monopoly as competition. “Hollywood films are sometimes discussed as ‘art’ by critics and some filmmakers,” explain Harry Benshoff and Sean Griffin, but “Hollywood film’s merit is chiefly judged by its box office revenue.”[60] Hollywood operates according to myths of market solutions without even acknowledging the state support that it receives. Scholarship shows that taxpayer monies subsidize Hollywood.[61]

April Reign’s #OscarsSoWhite notes disproportionate numbers of White (and Western) nominees, revealing about how Oscars’ definition of merit conceals industry connections and social privilege. Oscar apologists recite industry myths that Oscars bring audiences, launch careers, enhance professionalization, uplift standards—all of which are part of a broader White-Western liberalism that Ijeoma Oluo describes as “centered around preserving white male power regardless of white male skill or talent.”[62][62] Preserving this power, she argues, is a form of ensuring mediocrity since it “limits the drive and imagination of white men” and “requires forced limitations on the success of women and people of color in order to deliver on the promised white male supremacy.”[63] Sarah Ahmed argues that “meritocracy is the fantasy that those who are selected are best,” yet this fantasy “allows the system to recede from view,” and “when a system disappears from view, the assistance given by that system also disappears,” resulting in an unmarked inequality that allows “the selected [to] appear as unassisted by the system.”[64] Merit, then, becomes privilege within membership—which demands compliance and complicity with a system.

The term “merit” demands such compliance and complicity. Competition allegedly promises opportunity, but most films and filmmakers are excluded from eligibility. Rather than affirming Oscar’s power to define merit, educators can deconstruct this power in introductory curricula. Students need to consider how Oscar defines merit to distract from unfair advantages, such as industry connections, including nepotism, and unearned privilege, whether economic or social. Merit is abstracted and extracted from reality, including the political and social consequences of merit-worthy films that accept racial segregation and gendered glass ceilings. The Oscars define merit in terms of short-term profit without regard for long-term consequences. The Academy recognizes merit in films that reproduce Hollywood’s self-definition of a so-called universal or global model rather than a particular or local style of filmmaking. It is a White-Western serving institution that ensures that Hollywood retains its power.

Oscars reward White saviors

“It’s time for Hollywood to stop defining great drama as White men battling adversity,” argues Mary McNamara, since “in world filled with billions of people who are not white men, they are certainly not the only good stories, not by a long shot.”[65] The Oscars are themselves an exercise in White-saviorism with their “implicit messages of white paternalism,” what Matthew Hughey calls “whites going the extra mile across the color line.”[66] The Oscars presume to rescue Black films and filmmakers from the “obscurity” of Black awards. The Academy cannot fathom that the NAACP Image Awards, Black Reel Awards, and BET Awards have expertise in evaluating Black filmmaking. Such awards mean much more.

The Academy actually delegitimizes Black perspectives. One of its most pointed “snubs” was not nominating Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing (USA, 1989) about White police murdering an unarmed Black man decades before Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors, and Opal Tometi founded BLM and Darnella Frazier filmed George Floyd’s murder. The Oscar for Best Picture went to Driving Miss Daisy (USA, 1989; dir. Bruce Beresford), offering comfort to White people that racism is located individuals, who are capable of change, so no need for social reform. The Academy also snubbed Lee’s Malcolm X (USA, 1992) on one of the most important figures in the Civil Rights struggle. When Ava Duvernay was snubbed for Selma (UK/USA/France, 2014) about Martin Luther King Jr., another key figure, Lee questioned Oscar’s relevance. “Nobody’s talking about motherfuckin’ Driving Miss Daisy. That film is not being taught in film schools all across the world like Do the Right Thing is,” he said; “So if I saw Ava today I’d say, ‘You know what? Fuck ‘em.”[67]

When the Oscars overlooks Malcolm X and Selma, it become difficult to defend the Academy. Oscars go disproportionately to White filmmakers, who are imagined uniquely capable of mainstreaming not-White and not-Western stories to wider audiences by “amplifying” (i.e., appropriating) other people’s experiences. Although Satyajit Ray and Ousmane Sembène’s narrative features were “mistaken” as documentary, the Oscars seldom consider actual documentary features made by not-White and not-Western filmmakers. During the 2010s, winners for Best Documentary were films by and about Whites with a few exceptions.[68] Caty Borum Chattoo concludes the Oscars prefer White documentarians with Whites directing 87% and producing 91% of nominated features over the past decade; women (all races), directing 25% and producing 42%.[69]

White-Western women win Oscars for documentaries on “raising awareness” (rather than demanding accountability), “women’s empowerment” (rather than confronting White-Western patriarchy), and “entrepreneurship” (rather than supporting structural change). The Academy ignores U.S. sexism but is eager to recognize violence against women and honor killing in Pakistan and period poverty in India.[70] Awarded Best Documentary in 2005, Born into Brothels (USA, 2004; dir. Ross Kauffman and Zana Briski) established the benchmark for White-saviorism, continuing with Learning to Skateboard in a Warzone (If You’re a Girl) (UK, 2019; dir. Carol Dysinger) as Best Documentary Short Subject in 2020. Such films mobilize what Purnima Bose calls “agency in the liberal humanist conception of the subject [that] finds expression in the entrepreneurial self at the heart of neoliberalism.”[71]

The Academy also prefers documentaries with stories driven by characters and offering closure that brings “catharsis,” a pleasing and privileged feeling that all is or will soon be well, something impossible for many who suffer trauma. The Academy reduces documentary to a consumable product. Alexandra Juhasz and Alisa Lebow reject “common-sense wisdom that changing the narrative and telling a different story—or loads of different stories—will be enough.”[72] “Story itself has become part of the problem,” they explain.[73] Some of the earliest Oscar-winning documentaries were wartime propaganda as stories, including The Battle of Midway (USA, 1942; dir. John Ford) and Prelude to War (USA, 1942; dir. Frank Capra).[74]

White saviorism allows the Oscars to diversify with by awarding White women for making nationalist films. Kathryn Bigelow became the first to win Best Director for The Hurt Locker (USA, 2008), a film so complicit with U.S. militarism that it is overtly anti-feminist. Lila Abu-Lughod, Saba Mahmood, and Charles Hirschkind find spectacularly choreographed endorsements by Oscar-awarded or nominated actors, including Kathy Bates, Geena Davis, and Lily Tomlin, exemplify how Hollywood is coopted by U.S. militarism and resource extraction under the cover of “saving Muslim women.”^[75] Bigelow’s film lures audiences to weep over White soldiers rather than question White politicians.[76]

Dignity can be the price of Oscar

In 2019, Elizabeth Méndez Berry and Chi-hui Yang published an op-ed in The New York Times. Its title quickly changed from “We Need More Critics of Color” to “The Dominance of the White Male Critics.”[77] More alarming, its tagline about museum curators and film programmers fighting “white supremacy on the rise” was toned down to “conversation about our monuments, museums, screens and stages have the same blind spots as our political discourse.” Barry and Yang discussed Best Picture winner Green Book (USA, 2018; dir. Peter Farrelly), which received positive reviews from White critics (“a heartwarming triumph over racism”) and negative ones from Black critics (“another trite example of the country’s insatiable appetite for White-savior narratives”).[78] The editorial change echoes what Alex Ruth Bertuli-Fernandes expressed in a tweet about being instructed to “dial down the feminism” in an art class.[79] She posted an image of a dial that could be turned from “raging feminist” to “complicit with my own dehumanization.” Felicia Rose Chavez recounts her own experiences as a graduate student as “White allies warned [her] to ‘tone it down’,” fearing that her “activism” of advocating for “an elective class that featured contemporary writers of color” might annihilate her “professional network.”[80]

Requests to tone-down criticism are a form of intimidation. Green Book producer Charles B. Wessler outright bullied Jenni Miller over her review of the film: “African Americans for the most part LOVE this film. […] I will not go on and on about how wrong you are but you have a big ASS responsibility to write the TRUTH.”[81][81] Green Book exemplifies the toning down rewarded by the Oscars. Brooke Obie found the film appropriated The Negro Motorist Green Book. “Black people don’t even touch the Green Book, let alone talk about its vital importance to their lives,” she noted; “Instead, the film centers the story of a racist White man who makes an unlikely Black friend on a journey through the American south and becomes slightly less racist.”[82] “Uncritical affection for superficially benevolent stories can actually reinforce the racial hierarchies this country is built on,” argue Barry and Yang; “We need culture writers who see and think from places of difference and who are willing to take unpopular positions so that ideas can evolve or die.”[83]

Oscar idea of merit obscures more Black films than it highlights. Noting Losing Ground (USA, 1982; dir. Kathleen Collins) and Cane River (USA, 1982; dir. Horace Jenkins) as “rediscovered” films, Racquel Gates describes Oscar preference for Black pain over Black lives, much less Black joy, asking: “How many more Black films languish on the verge of disappearance, films that may not have been deemed ‘important’ because they cared more to focus on the lovely intricacies of Black life rather than delivering Black pain for White consumption?”[84] She finds: “Black film is still too often assessed for its didactic value, with artistic and intellectual contributions deemed secondary.”[85]

Her assessment echoes what Satyajit Ray experienced. Ray was never nominated for an Oscar. Few Indian films have been: only Bharat Mata/Mother India (India, 1957; dir. Mehboob Khan), Salaam Bombay! (UK/India/France, 1988; dir. Mira Nair), and Lagaan: Once Upon a Time in India (India, 2001; dir. Ashutosh Gowariker) in nearly 70 years of considering non-Hollywood films.[86] Despite making most of the world’s films, few Indians are Academy members. Resul Pookutty was invited after being noticed for sound mixing in Slumdog Millionaire, a film that romanticized Mumbai’s Dharavi slum and won Best Picture. Indian filmmakers have made films of Dharavi, including ones who live there, but the Academy favors White perspectives on India.

Before Slumdog Millionaire, Gandhi won eight in 1983, including Best Actor, Best Director, and Best Picture. Ben Kingsley, whose father is Guajarati and whose mother is White, won, but Roshan Seth, Saeed Jaffrey, Alyque Padamsee, Amrish Puri, and Rohini Hattangadi were not nominated. Oscar apologist Emanuel Levy laments that Gandhi beat Tootsie (USA, 1982; dir. Sydney Pollack) and E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (USA, 1982; dir. Steven Spielberg).[87][87] and berates the Oscars for what he calls “PC cultural diversity.”[88][88] David Lean’s A Passage to India (UK/USA, 1984) gained nominations and wins. Victor Banerjee was not nominated for his role of the falsely accused sexual predator, but Judy Davis was nominated for her role as the fragile White woman, who only retracted her false accusations after the damage had already been done. Banerjee’s character Dr. Aziz grows from obsequiously trying to please the British to refusing their conditional friendship.

Competition undermines solidarity

Myths of competition and meritocracy focus on individualism, undermining solidarities needed for decolonization. The Oscars segregate with hierarchies of above- and below-the-line labor—and partition with (unmarked English-language) categories from marked foreign-language/international ones.[89] Hollywood frames collective bargaining to protect industry workers—and quotas to protect domestic markets—as “obstacles” to free competition, yet Hollywood panicked when Hong Kong films topped the U.S. box office in the 1970s. The films starred Chinese diasporic actors, including Lo Lieh, Bruce Lee, and Angela Mao, who defeated corrupt White authority figures. Hollywood responded with imitations, starring White men in yellowface, notably David Carradine as Kwai Chang Caine in the television series Kung Fu (USA, 1972).

Since “neocolonialism needs to convince people of a dependent country of their own inferiority,” Fernando Solanas and Octavio Getino cautioned Latin American filmmakers from imitating Hollywood.[90] They demystified filmmaking as work, not by “artists,” “geniuses,” “the privileged,” but by “the worker.”[91]Organized labor threatens Hollywood. During the era of McCarthyism, Salt of the Earth (USA, 1953; dir. Herbert Biberman) was effectively banned for its transgressive themes of transnational solidarity and gendered equality. The filmmakers were “blacklisted” for association with the U.S. Communist Party, which opposed racial segregation and supported labor and civil rights. The Academy promotes myths that anyone can succeed, that skill and talent matter more than connections and privilege. It prefers exceptional individuals, surmounting obstacles against overwhelming odds to become “our heroes.” Individualism reinforces myths that nothing needs to change except individual mindsets, diminishing the need for collective action to dismantle an unfair system.

Oscar bureaucracy accentuates biases, essentialisms, and eurocentrities. For not-Western films, the primary access to the Oscars is through the Best Foreign-language/International Film category. Countries can nominate one film. Lionheart (Nigeria, 2018; dir. Genevieve Nnaji) and Joy (Austria, 2018; dir. Sudabeh Mortezai) were disqualified for having “too much” English.[92] Oscar’s exclusion of Be with Me (Singapore, 2015; dir. Erik Khoo) was ironic in the context of Singapore’s own “Speak Good English Movement.”[93] Hollywood’s imperial politics are apparent in how few films are nominated from postcolonial states and fewer still from occupied nations.

Puerto Rican filmmakers were ineligible in 2011, silencing their perspectives on U.S. imperialism. Palestinian filmmakers have been made ineligible since only “recognized” states can nominate films. Elia Suleiman’s Yadon ilaheyya/Divine Intervention (France/Morocco/Germany/Palestine, 2002) was deemed a stateless film.[96] The film features a keffiyeh-clad Palestinian woman, who transforms into a flying ninja to defeat IDF soldiers. By contrast, Hany Abu-Assad’s Al-Jannah Al-Aan/Paradise Now (Palestine/France/Germany/Netherlands/Israel, 2005) on suicide bombers during the second Intifada was accepted as Palestinian. Under pressure from pro-Israeli members, Palestine was renamed “Palestinian territories.” The Academy later accepted Abu-Assad’s Omar (Palestine, 2013) about Palestinians coerced into becoming Israeli informants as a nomination from Palestine.[95]

In 2017, Bahman Ghobadi asked the Academy CEO Dawn Hudson to consider the regulation’s erasure of exiled filmmakers, who cannot count upon a nomination by the state they fled.[96] No such category exists today.The Academy seems prejudiced against films and filmmakers from Muslim countries. Oscar only recognized Iranian cinema in 2012, awarding Jodaeiye Nader az Simin/A Separation (Iran, 2011; dir. Asghar Farhadi), which was Iran’s second nomination. Israel has had ten. Mizrahi (Arab) Jews in Israel and diasporic Arabs in Europe became finalists.[97] Arab Muslims in Arab states are not selected. Such omissions contribute to feelings of being presumed incompetent, evident in Arab critics, who associate Oscar nominations with merit, arguing that “with better financial support and fewer restraints, Arab films from the Middle East [sic] could very well be nominated for Oscars every year. And who knows—maybe soon one will actually win.”[98] Other critics understand the Oscars differently. “For what use is an Oscar if it comes at the price of justice, freedom, equality and dignity?” asks Halim Shebaya.[99] When Whites and Westerners celebrate their Oscar wins, they might want to consider whether it comes at the price of someone else’s dignity.

Exceptional opportunities can be institutional opportunism

During the pandemic’s second year, journalists noted that it seemed “like the Oscar nominations never happened” based on what topped Netflix charts, alongside Apple TV, FandangoNOW, and Google Play.[100] The mythical “Oscar bump” of a 30% increase in ticket sales for mid-budget and non-U.S. films from a nomination vanished.[101] Oscar wins for underrepresented groups  may do more for Oscar branding than for the actors’ careers. The awards can seem like intuitional opportunism to whitewash history. White actors benefit more from winning an Oscar than Black actors.[102] Brandon Thorp find only “10 black women have been nominated for best actress, and nine of them played characters who are homeless or might soon become so. (The exception is Viola Davis, for the 2011 drama The Help [USA, 2011; dir. Tate Taylor]).”[103] Her nomination for Best Supporting Actresswas hardly an exceptional opportunity.[104] Davis associates acting in the film with betraying herself and her community.[105] Beyond numbers of nominations, roles must be considered.

Almost 60 years after Hattie McDaniel, Berry became the second Black women to win an Oscar for portraying a “conflation of the sexual siren and the welfare queen” in Monster’s Ball (USA, 2001; dir. Marc Foster).[106] The win was symbolic—for Berry and the Academy, but new opportunities did not open for Black women, as the awards continued.[107] Berry’s roles in Batman and X-Men films were unbound of racist stereotypes but disconnected from Black experiences. Like “positive images,” superheroes don’t deconstruct Hollywood prejudice.[108]After becoming first Latina/Latinx woman to win an Oscar for West Side Story (USA, 1961; dir. Jerome Robbins and Robert Wise), Rita Moreno abandoned Hollywood.[109] Anna May Wong and Sabu had done the same back in the 1930s and 1950s. Indeed, Thorpe calculates 13 of 20 nominations for Black men in leading roles “involve being arrested or incarcerated”—and 15 “involve violent or criminal behavior.”[110] Ten have “a white buddy or counterpart,” seven “feature no major black female characters,” and “seven of the characters abuse or mistreat women.”[111] The Academy nominates Black actors who, in words of Miriam Petty, play characters “bound to the destinies of the white people.”[112] Morgan Freeman and Berry won for characters that perform a narrative function of giving White characters opportunities to overcome their individual racism. Structural racism is ignored. The awards define merit in individualist terms, not social ones.

As bell hooks argues, we don’t need diverse representations, but transgressive possibilities.[113] Film educators introduce transgressive possibilities by incorporating ways to deconstruct industry myths. Tracey Moffatt and Gary Hillberg’s compilation film Lip (USA, 1999) unsettles Hollywood’s asymmetrical power allocations to Black and White women. They cut against chronology, avoiding Hollywood fantasies of incremental liberation. Footage underscores how White women increasingly have become false allies to Black women. A clip from For Pete’s Sake (USA, 1974; dir. Peter Yates) show Barbara Streisand’s character open the door to Vivian Bonnell but block her entrance. Opportunity’s door is open, but the way-in is blocked. Black actors are also locked into stereotypes. Bonnell plays Streisand’s “sassy” maid, echoing McDaniel’s Mammy. Moffatt and Hillberg reject the merit of Hollywood’s technically perfect images. The deconstruct with “poor images,” which Hito Steyerl argues reject industry propaganda that image resolution is the marker of quality.[114] Moffatt and Hillberg demonstrate opportunities for deconstructing Hollywood myths via feminist media practices.

Black filmmakers offer examples of transgressive possibilities. Among the first Black graduates from UCLA’s film school reinvented filmmaking. Julie Dash questions Hollywood’s extraction of Black labor in Illusions (USA, 1982). Set during segregation, Lonette McKee plays Mignon Dupree, a lighter-skinned Black woman, passing as White to work in a Hollywood. Rosanne Katon plays Esther Jeter, hired to “lend” her voice to a star. Dubbing singing voices conceals Black labor required to create the illusion of White talent.[115] The White star is not required to lipsynch to Jeter’s voice; instead, Jeter is required to pitch her singing to follow the White star’s facial gestures. Dupree alone treats Jeter with dignity, offering food and drink after a long day’s work inside the segregated studio, whose production is salvaged by Jeter’s uncredited labor. Dupree labor in passing is self-alienating and must remain unremarked. When Jeter signal recognition, Dupree deflects it. She must endure self-alienation to open the racist system to other Black women.[116] Dupree challenges stereotypes of tragic mulattas.

A different Oscar, a better role model

Film educators might look to Oscar Micheaux over the Oscar awards for ideas of merit. Rather than working for change inside an existing system, Micheaux invented a new one, opening his own publishing and distribution companies in the 1910s. Even as the White House celebrated The Birth of a Nation (USA, 1915; dir. D.W. Griffith), something the NAACP denounced, Micheaux rejected simplistic “positive images” to offer complex social and cultural analyses of Black experiences. Body and Soul (USA, 1925) starred Paul Robeson, later unjustly criminalized under McCarthyism, in two roles. Micheaux’s films were not perfect. In fact, bell hooks notes his nuance with male characters did not extend to female characters.[117] Film education reproduces Academy definitions of merit as technical rather than social when Griffith’s films are taught over Micheaux’s.

The Oscars are structured around unfair advantages and unearned privileges. Educators can refuse to give them power. “We have to find new ways of external validation that do not predicate themselves on White supremacy,” suggests Roxana Gay.[118] Jack Halberstam praises Stefano Harney and Fred Moten for conceiving refusal as a “first right,” that is, a “game-changing kind of refusal in that it signals the refusal of the choices as offered.”[119] Jada Pinkett Smith refused to gift her cultural capital to the 2016 Oscar ceremony, noting: “Should people of color refrain from participating all together? People can only treat us in the way in which we allow.”[120] She continued: “Begging for acknowledgement, or even asking, diminishes dignity, and diminishes power, and we are a dignified people, and we are powerful, and let’s not forget it.”[121] Spike Lee joined her in boycotting the ceremony.Pinkett Smith attended in 2022 to support her husband’s nomination during a ceremony heavily promoted as a watershed moment with unprecedented numbers of Black faces in front of cameras and behind them. When Will Smith slapped host Chris Rock over a joke about Pinkett Smith’s hair, the Academy attempted redeem itself from inflicting Black pain by inflicting Black punishment.[122]

Oscar has historically been more attuned to White pleasure than Black pain. Due to segregation, David O. Selznick “had to call in a special favor just to have Hattie McDaniel allowed into the building” where the ceremony was held and where she would become the first Black actor to win an Oscar.[123] She was made to feel uncomfortable, so that the Academy’s White members could feel good about themselves for rewarding her portrayal of a racist stereotype. It continues. Haile Gerima was given an inaugural Vantage Award by the Academy in 2021, yet Yohana Desta notes that he was being “fêted” by an industry that he actively opposed his entire career—alongside Sophia Loren from the very country that colonized Ethiopia.[124] He endured ignorance of history—or indifference to his pain—as a favor to Ava DuVernay.

Ryan Coogler made news by refusing an invitation to join the Academy. “I love movies. … For me, that’s good enough. If I’m going to be a part of organizations, they’re going to be labor unions, where we’re figuring out how to take care of each other’s families and health insurance. But I know that these things bring exposure,” he explained.[125] Coogler exposes the price for “exposure.” Hollywood’s gig economy renders life and livelihood precarious for most people working in the industry. Coogler’s refusal to give away his cultural capital is all the more remarkable because he did it in 2021 as the Academy celebrated itself for avoiding another year of #OscarsSoWhite. It nominated its first Muslim (Riz Ahmed) and first Asian American (Steven Yeun) actors, plus two women directors (Emerald Fennell and Chloé Zhao). The Oscars’ outlier year, notes Variety, reveals “the fact that it took until 2021 for the Academy Awards to recognize a widely heterogeneous array of nominees also speaks directly to the deeply entrenched prejudices that have kept people of color outside of the Oscars—and the film industry at large—for so long.”[126] It might be better to ignore the Oscars all together than Oscar Micheaux did.

De-Oscar-izing film education

Adam White rhetorically asks what purpose the Oscars serve.[127]They matter because critics, distributors, educators, exhibitors, makers, ­and students often look to the Oscars as shorthand for worthy of merit.[128] Women constitute more than 50% of the planet’s population—and not-White and not-Western people constitute most of it, yet their perspectives seldom appear in films awarded Oscars. The Academy might increase not-White and not-Western members, but the criteria of judgement are designed to exclude them.[129] Students often arrive in classes with their entire perception of filmmaking defined by Hollywood and its Oscars.[130] Understanding what the Oscars actually represents and whose interests they actually support is a compelling reason to reject them.

Decolonizing curricula and pedagogy are merely a beginning to actual reparations and abolitions that must take place to address various inequities. When film education emphasizes technical achievement, star system, and popular genres, while ignoring labor conditions and trade agreements, is allows Hollywood to set the terms. The Academy’s technical and artistic merit bulldozes all else (i.e., how the film intersects with the real world). Gone with the Wind and Lawrence of Arabia (UK/USA, 1962; dir. David Lean), both Oscar winners for Best Picture, alongside The Jazz Singer (USA, 1927; dir. Alan Crosland) and The Searchers (USA, 1956; dir. John Ford), have technical merit that is historical, but little social merit that is relevant. Oscar-winners and serial nominees Wes Anderson, Danny Boyle, James Cameron, Francis Ford and Sophia Coppola, Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg also warrant reconsideration since they fail to challenge the system that guarantees their power. Film education needs de-Oscarizing to prevent future generations like them.

Film education is a starting point for decolonizing film criticism, distribution, and exhibition. By deconstructing the Oscars, educators can deconstruct film education. Much like the Academy segregates and partitions technical and artistic merit from political and social consequences, film education traditionally segregates “production and craft” (i.e., technical and practical training) from “history, theory, and criticism” (i.e., intellectual, contextual, and political training), thereby promoting a particular kind of filmmaking as the only and best one. Film practice and studies can be integrated, so that technical or artistic choices are understood as having political or social consequences.

Integrating studies and practice allows for opportunities to deconstruct industry-driven assumptions about story, character, style, aesthetics, technical skill, production values, and work flow that can make it difficult for not-White and not-Western students to tell their stories from their perspective. Too many classes remain colonizing with untheorized assumptions about “relatability,” “personal vision,” and “proper technique.” Students can be misled with naïve statements that art and criticism are incompatible—that “over-thinking” (euphemism for thinking critically) kills creativity, as though thinking were somehow not creative—and creating was somehow outside thinking. Comparably, film educators can reject business solutions to make curricula more diverse and inclusive. Instead, they can focus on what bell hooks describes as an “oppositional gaze,” which can be trained to recognize other definitions of merit, such as advocating for rights, changing toxic discourses, or locating new role-models.

Why #OscarMustFall matters to everyone

If Rhodes must fall, Oscar must fall—and it is a shared responsibility to help it fall. Given crises that current and future generations will face, merit in activist, community, Indigenous, and other noncommercial filmmaking modes might be recognized. Assimilating to Oscar’s model is an exercise in “disempowerment,” to borrow Felicia Rose Chavez’s term.[131] Film critics, distributors, educators, exhibitors, and makers can contribute in different ways.

Educators might reflect upon their role in perpetuating disempowerment. If students think that an Oscar nomination proves that films or filmmakers from their home culture or country are finally “good enough,” educators can help them see that the Academy is actually not good enough to evaluate such films and filmmakers. Educators can deconstruct such disempowering assumptions as part of the curriculum, requiring White-Western students “to acquire the intellectual and cultural resources to function effectively in a plural society.”[132]

Critics can minimize industry awards and box-office figures, which contribute to a cycle of disempowerment, and champion other models. Juan Francisco Salazar and Amalia Córdova describe how Indigenous media festivals decouple the term “best” from individual achievement and apply it to social engagement.[133] Where mainstream media to focus attention on socially engaged film, it might embolden distributors and exhibitioners to select more. Makers can stop defining themselves by festivals and awards. Instead, they can define themselves by the content of their films—and the debates into which their films intervene.

Hollywood already saturates media with press releases and promotional materials, so there is no need for any of us to disseminate manufactured buzz. Instead, we can focus on evaluating films, not as escapist entertainment, but as engaged responses that aim to shift larger public discourses on social issues of climate crisis, neoliberal economics, populist nationalisms, private wars, public health, religious fundamentalism, single-issue feminism, and systemic racism. We need to become advocates and allies for future generations, whose world will be more precarious than our own. #OscarMustFall is not to say that Oscar should be destroyed but that it should be decentered; in other words, it should not stand as a universal or global marker of merit. It should stand for what it really is, that is, a White-Western-serving institution, whose very purpose is extending its power as a brand. Films education needs to deconstruct Oscar’s myth of merit. Oscar is not going to change, but we can stop giving it the power that it will always abuse.

Postscript

Refusing the Oscars involves risk, evident in the Academy’s recent apology to Sacheen Littlefeather for how she was treated at the 1973 Oscar ceremony when she read a statement on behalf of Marlon Brando, who boycotted the ceremony and refused an acting award due to racist treatment of “American Indians” by Hollywood and the United States.[134] As the current Academy president admits, she was “professionally boycotted, personally harassed and attacked.”[135] The letter characterizes the intimidation and retribution as “abuse.”[136] Hollywood did not treat Brando as it treated as Littlefeather.

Appendix

Since this article’s publication, The Washington Post promoted a list of 25 “most-assigned films” on 4.5 million university syllabi for classes in any field, taught between 2015 and 2021.[137] Spike Lee was correct. His Do the Right Thing is number 2, and Driving Miss Daisy did not make the list. Lee is also one of two not-White directors. The other is the only not-Western: Kurosawa Akira for Rashoman (Japan, 1950), so no not-Western films produced in our lifetimes makes the list. Dziga Vertov’s Man with a Movie Camera (USSR, 1929) is number 1. There are only two films directed by women, both White. At number 20 is Jennie Livingston’s documentary Paris Is Burning (USA, 1990) on Blank and Latinx gay and transgender ball culture, which is also the only film to consider LBGTQ+ people. Leni Riefenstahl’s The Trump of the Will (Germany, 1935), a celebration of Adolf Hitler, is number 8, just below D.W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation (USA, 1915), a celebration of the Ku Klux Klan. In his introductory textbook, first published in 1999 before most undergraduate students were born, Robert Kolker describes Riefenstahl and Griffith as “unredeemable figure in film history.”[138] The presence of their most racist films on this list is troubling since faculty today generally do not subject students to overtly racist films in their entirety but instead opt to screen films that respond to them by deconstructing their racism. In all 21 of 25 films are directed by White men. Not surprisingly, Lee’s film is the only one on the list that addresses racism since the onus of calling attention to oppression typically falls on those who suffer from oppression.  

The data is compiled by the Open Syllabus, which indicates that 75% of the syllabi are from universities in White-majority Western states (i.e., Australia, Britain, Canada, and the United States).[139] Searching states with the world’s largest industries based on the number produced annually, the list reveals only eight films (six of which are Bombay or Bollywood films) from the world’s largest, India; zero from the second largest, Nigeria; three from the third largest, China; 30 from the fourth largest producer, Japan; plenty from the fifth largest, the United States; only four (all from the past two decades) from the sixth largest, South Korea; and about 143 from the seventh largest, France. Leaving aside the implicit disempowerments of limiting film education to feature-length narrative films—Luis Buñuel’s Un Chien andalou (France, 1929) is the only short film to make the top 25, the unrepenting eurocentrism of these syllabi is out of step with reality. There are only seven films from México; six from Brazil; five from Taiwan; four from Argentina; three each from Iran (all by Abbas Kiarostami), Sénégal, and Turkey, one each from Colombia, Israel, and Thailand; and zero from Algeria, Cameroon, Ghana, Egypt, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Lebanon, Kenya, Morocco, Pakistan, Philippines, South Africa, Syria, Tanzania, or Uganda. The data shows that film educators practice erasure more than the tokenism that administrators request. How are students going to be prepared for the present, much less the future, when they are likely watching three films by Alfred Hitchcock and none from a not-White or not-Western woman?

Originally published in Jump Cut, volume 61 [link]

Notes

[1] Howard Zinn, A People’s History of the United States (New York: Harper Perennial, 1980). James W. Loewen, Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Book Got Wrong (New York: The New Press, 1995).

[2] Critical race theory (CRT) examines how law defines race. U.S. politicians exploit “white fragility” (i.e., discomfort when Whites talk about race and racism) and foment “white rage” (i.e., violence from discomfort) by claiming that CRT is taught in primary or secondary schools to make White children feel bad about themselves. Carol Anderson, White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide (New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2016). Robin DiAngelo, White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism (Boston: Beacon Press, 2020).

[3] Sabelo J. Ndlovu-Gatsheni, “Rhodes Must Fall,” Epistemic Freedom in Africa: Deprovincialization and Decolonization, ed. Sabelo J. Ndlovu-Gatsheni (New York: Routledge, 2018), 222–242. University students across South Africa pronounced, “Rhodes Must Fall,” because Cecil Rhodes symbolized the hegemonic willingness to overlook systemic racism.

[4] I use the terms not-White and not-Western rather than non-White and non-Western. My initial impulse was to use more-than-White and more-than-Western to emphasize exceeding the limits of Whiteness and Westernness, rather than failing to meet the threshold of Whiteness and Westernness—and also to use White-only and Western-only to emphasize lack.

[5] Decolonization begins with manifestos by Third Worldist filmmakers cited below. Also see: Teshome Gabiel’s Third Cinema in the Third World: The Aesthetics of Liberation (Ann Arbor: UMI Research, 1982). Roy Armes, Third World Film Making and the West (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987). Jim Pines and Paul Willemen, Questions of Third Cinema (London: British Film Institute, 1990).

[6] Ella Shohat and Robert Stam, Unthinking Eurocentrism: Multiculturalism and the Media (New York: Routledge, 1994/2014).

[7] Usha Iyer, “A Pedagogy of Reparations,” Feminist Media Studies 18, no. 1 (2022), 181, 186.

[8] Bethany Lacina and Ryan Hecker, “The Academy Awards Will Have New Diversity Rules to Qualify for an Oscar. But There’s a Huge Loophole,” Washington Post (23 April 2021), https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/04/23/academy-awards-will-have-new-diversity-rules-qualify-an-oscar-theres-huge-loophole/.Kyle Buchanan, “The Oscars’ New Diversity Rules Are Sweeping but Safe,” New York Times (16 May 2021), https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/09/movies/oscars-best-picture-diversity.html. To illustrate the article, a photo of a White woman spraying gold paint on a larger-than-life statue of the Oscar statuette is captioned: “The Oscars, like this statue, need their luster restored.”

[9] The Immigration Act of 1965 eliminated the “national quotas” on immigration, which were associated with preventing European Jews from escaping death under the Nazis but also worked to minimize immigration from not-White/not-Western states. Affirmative Action employs quotas that disproportionately favor White women.

[10] Maggie Hennefeld, “The Work of Art in the Age of Flexible Inclusion Criteria,” Film Quarterly (30 September 2020), https://filmquarterly.org/2020/09/30/the-work-of-art-in-the-age-of-flexible-inclusion-criteria/.

[11] Hennefeld, “The Work of Art.”

[12] Hennefeld, “The Work of Art.”

[13] Elaine Teng, “Michael Caine on #OscarsSoWhite: Black actors Should ‘Be Patient’,” The New Republic (22 January 2016), https://newrepublic.com/article/128207/michael-caine-oscarssowhite-black-actors-be-patient.

[14] Rachel Donadio, “Charlotte Rampling Says Oscars ‘Boycott’ Is ‘Racist Against Whites’,” New York Times, (22 January 2016), https://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/23/movies/charlotte-rampling-says-oscars-furor-is-racist-against-whites.html.

[15] Jessica Valent, “Abuse Isn’t Romantic. So Why the Panic That Feminists Are Killing Eros?,” The Guardian (12 January 2018), https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2018/jan/12/abuse-isnt-romantic-feminists-eros-me-too.

[16] Eugene Franklin Wong, On Visual Media Racism: Asians in American Motion Pictures (New York: Arno, 1978).

[17] Nancy Wang Yuen, Reel Inequality: Hollywood Actors and Racism (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2017).

[18] Latonja Sinckler, “And the Oscar Goes to; Well, It Can’t Be You, Can It: A Look at Race-Based Casting and How It Legalizes Racism, Despite Title VII Laws,” Journal of Gender, Social Policy & The Law 22, no. 4 (2014), 861.

[19] Sharon Willis, High Contrast: Race and Gender in Contemporary Hollywood Film (Durham: Duke University, 1997).

[20] Sinckler, “Oscar Goes to,” 875.

[21] Derek Thompson, “Oscar Voters: 94% White, 76% Men, and an Average of 63 Years Old,” The Atlantic (03 March 2014), https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2014/03/oscar-voters-94-white-76-men-and-an-average-of-63-years-old/284163/.

[22] Olúfémi O. Táíwò, Elite Capture: How the Powerful Took Over Identity Politics (and Everythig Else) (Chicago: Haymarket, 2022), 4–5.

[23] In What’s the Use?, Ahmed describes how University College London erased the term eugenics to whitewash the name Francis Galton (166–167). Rhodes was racist, but scholarships named after him are granted to racially/ethnically “diverse” students.

[24] The Brian Lehrer Show, “Wendell Pierce on #OscarsSoWhite,” WNYC (22 January 2016), https://www.wnyc.org/story/wendell-pierce-oscarssowhite/.

[25] As cited in Clayton Davis, “Latinos’ Absence in Hollywood Has Felt Deliberate. Is 2021 the Year It Changes?,” Variety (08 April 2021), https://variety.com/2021/film/awards/latino-movies-in-2021-hollywood-oscars-representation-1234946882/.

[26] As told to Scott Feinberg, “Brutally Honest Oscar Ballot #2: Get Out Filmmakers ‘Played the Race Card’, ‘Just Sick of” Meryl Streep’,” Hollywood Reporter (02 March 2018), https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/lists/brutally-honest-oscar-ballot-get-filmmakers-played-race-card-just-sick-meryl-streep-1090440.

[27] Madhusree Mukerjee, Churchill’s Secret War: The British Empire and the Ravaging of India during World War II (New York: Basic Books, 2011).

[28] Esther Breger, “The ‘Hollywood Blackout’ at the 1996 Academy Awards,” The New Republic (29 January 2016, https://newrepublic.com/article/128584/hollywood-blackout-1996-academy-awards.

[29] Jacqueline Keeler, “‘#OscarsSoWhite, Again: A Symptom of Hollywood’s Racism” New America Media (16 January 2016), http://newamericamedia.org/2016/01/oscarssowhite-again-a-symptom-of-hollywoods-racism.php.

[30] Keeler, “‘#OscarsSoWhite, Again.”

[31] Deborah Shaw, The Three Amigos: The Transnational Filmmaking of Guillermo del Toro, Alejandro González Iñárritu, and Alfonso Cuarón (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2013), 1–2.

[32] Jorge Cotte, “Are Roma’s Oscar Nominations a Win for Diversity or a Different Shade of Whiteness in Hollywood?,” Remezcla (15 February 2019), http://remezcla.com/features/film/alfonso-cuaron-oscar-nomination-diversity/.

[33] Yasmina Price, “Western Films About Africa Are Neocolonial Even When They Try Not to Be,” Hyperallergic (30 May 2021), https://hyperallergic.com/648474/stop-filming-us-congo-documentary-colonialism/.

[34] Lee’s Sense and Sensibility (USA/UK, 1998) was recognized at BAFTA.

[35] John Tomlinson, Cultural Imperialism: A Critical Introduction (London: Continuum, 1991), 54.

[36] Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, Decolonising the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature (Woodbridge: James Currey, 1986), 3.

[37] Ngũgĩ, Decolonising the Mind, 3.

[38] Cited in Ngũgĩ, Decolonising the Mind, 29.

[39] Stella Kim and Hanna Park, “Youn Yuh-jung is Just Not That into Hollywood,” NBC News (28 April 2021), https://www.nbcnews.com/news/asian-america/k-grandma-youn-yuh-jung-just-not-hollywood-n1265530.

[40] Producers want to make money across markets, and Parasite’s producer Kwak Sin-ae is CEO of a major media company.

[41] Brian Hu, “Commentary: Parasite Became an Oscars Success Story Overnight Because of Years of Asian American Support,” The San Diego Union-Tribune (13 February 2020), https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/opinion/story/2020-02-13/parasite-oscar-bong-joon-ho-best-picture.

[42] Henry Aray, “Oscar Awards and Foreign Language Film Production: Evidence for a Panel of Countries,” Journal of Cultural Economics (2021), https://doi.org/10.1007/s10824-020-09402-3.

[43] Aray, “Oscar Awards and Foreign Language Film Production.”

[44] Unifrance, “24 French Coproductions in the Running for the Oscar for Best International Feature,” Unifrance (05 November 2021), https://en.unifrance.org/news/16165/24-french-coproductions-in-the-running-for-the-oscar-for-best-international-feature.

[45] Paul McDonald, “Miramax, Life is Beautiful, and the Indiewoodization of the Foreign-language Film Market in the USA,” New Review of Film and Television Studies 7, no. 4 (2009), 357, 358.

[46] Karina Longworth, “The Legend of Harvey Scissorhands,” Grantland (15 October 2013), https://grantland.com/features/does-harvey-weinstein-help-hurt-movies/.

[47] Robert Stam and Ella Habiba Shohat, “Film Theory and Spectatorship in the Age of ‘Posts’,” in Reinventing Film Studies, ed. Christine Gledhill and Linda Williams (London: Arnold, 2000), 382.

[48] Swapnil Dhruv Bose, “Martin Scorsese Named His 125 Favourite Films of All Time,” Far Out (12 December 2021), https://faroutmagazine.co.uk/martin-scorsese-125-favourite-films-of-all-time.

[49] Anna Cooper, “A New Feminist Critique of Film Canon: Moving Beyond the Diversity/Inclusion Paradigm in the Digital Era,” Quarterly Review of Film and Video 36, no. 5 (2019), 392–413.

[50] Gomery, Hollywood Studio System, 181; Philip H. Gordon and Sophie Meunier, “Globalization and French Cultural Identity,” French Politics, Culture & Society 19, no. 1 (2001), 22–41.

[51] Ruth Vasey, “The World-Wide Spread of Cinema,” in The Oxford History of World Cinema, ed. Geoffrey Nowell-Smith (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 53.

[52] Gomery, Hollywood Studio System, 65.

[53] Toby Miller, “Hollywood and the World” in The Oxford Guide to Film Studies, ed. John Hill, Pamela Church Gibson (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 373.

[54] Terms like Bollywood (Mumbai), Chinawood (Dongyang), Hallyuwood (Seoul), Lollywood (Lahore), Kollywood (Chennai), Mollywood (Kerala, mostly Kochi), Nollywood (Nigeria, especially Lagos), and Tollywood (Hyderabad) are also problematic.

[55] Julio García Espinosa, “For an Imperfect Cinema” (1969), trans. Julianne Burton, Jump Cut 20 (1979), https://www.ejumpcut.org/archive/onlinessays/JC20folder/ImperfectCinema.html.

[56] Satyajit Ray, “What’s Wrong with Indian Films?” (1948), Our Films, Their Films (Bombay: Oriental Blackswan, 1976), 22.

[57] Chandak Sengoopta, “‘The Universal Film for All of Us, Everywhere in the World’: Satyajit Ray’s Pather Panchali (1955) and the Shadow of Robert Flaherty,” Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television 29, no. 3 (2009), 278, 280.

[58] Mahen Bonetti and Carlos A. Gutiérrez, South of the Other (New York: The Flaherty/International Film Seminars, 2007).

[59] Douglas Gomery, The Hollywood Studio System: A History (London: British Film Institute, 2005), 68; Emanuel Levy, All about Oscar: The History and Politics of the Academy Awards (New York: Continuum, 2003), 41.

[60] Harry M. Benshoff and Sean Griffin, America on Film: Representing Race, Class, Gender, and Sexuality at the Movies (Malden: Blackwell, 2004), 31.

[61] Toby Miller, Nitin Govil, John McMurria, and Richard Maxwell, Global Hollywood 2 (London: British Film Institute, 2005).

[62] Ijeoma Oluo, Mediocre: The Dangerous Legacy of White Male Power (London: Basic Books, 2020), 6.

[63] Oluo, Mediocre, 6.

[64] Sarah Ahmed, What’s the Use?: On the Uses of Use (Durham: Duke University Press, 2019), 194.

[65] Mary McNamara, “It’s Time for Hollywood to Stop Defining Great Drama as White Men Battling Adversity,” Los Angeles Times (15 January 2016), http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/envelope/la-et-st-oscars-mcnamara-notebook-white-hollywood-20160115-column.html.

[66] Matthew W. Hughey, The White-savior Film: Content, Critics, and Consumption (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2014), 8.

[67] Cited in Marlow Stern. “Spike Lee Blasts ‘Selma’ Oscar Snubs: ‘You Know What? F*ck ’Em’,” Daily Beast (12 July 2017), https://www.thedailybeast.com/spike-lee-blasts-selma-oscar-snubs-you-know-what-fck-em?ref=scroll.

[68] They are 20 Feet from Stardom (USA, 2013; dir. Morgan Neville) and The White Helmets (UK, 2016; dir. Orlando von Einsiedel), in which White-Western filmmakers tell not-White or not-Western stories, and O.J.: Made in America (USA, 2016; dir. Ezra Edelman) on O.J. Simpson and perhaps also Searching for Sugar Man (Sweden/UK/Finland, 2012; dir. Malik Bendjelloul) about two White South Africans, saving Native American singer Sixto Rodriguez from obscurity.

[69] Caty Borum Chattoo, “Oscars So White: Gender, Racial, and Ethnic Diversity and Social Issues in U.S. Documentary Films (2008–2017),” Mass Communication and Society 21 (2018), 380.

[70] Short documentaries include Saving Face (USA/Pakistan, 2012; dir. Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy and Daniel Junge), A Girl in the River: The Price of Forgiveness (USA/Pakistan, 2015; dir. Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy), and Period. End of Sentence (USA, 2018; dir. Rayka Zehtabchi). The only winner to focus on positive events outside United States is Strangers No More (Israel, 2010; dir. Karen Goodman and Kirk Simon) on an Israeli school attended by immigrant children.

[71] Purnima Bose, Intervention Narratives: Afghanistan, the United States, and the Global War on Terror (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2020), 9–11.

[72] Alexandra Juhasz and Alisa Lebow, “Introduction: Beyond Story,” World Records 5, no. 1 (2021), 9.

[73] “The current socio-historical context has transformed storytelling into an unchallenged neoliberal palliative, a way to make us feel better, a means of preventing us for attending to necessary paradigm shifts.” Lebow and Juhasz, “Beyond Story,” 9.

[74] Occasionally, films somewhat critical of U.S. policy win, including The Panama Deception (USA/UK, 1992; dir. Barbara Trent) and Taxi to the Dark Side (USA, 2007; dir. Alex Gibney).

[75] Lila Abu-Lughod, “Do Muslim Women Need Saving? Anthropological Reflections on Cultural Relativism and Its Others,” American Anthropologist 104, no. 3 (2002), 787; Charles Hirschkind and Saba Mahmood, “Feminism, the Taliban, and the Politics of Counter-Insurgency,” Anthropological Quarterly 75, no. 2 (2002), 107–122.

[76] In “And the winner is… Islamophobia,” The Guardian (14 January 2013), www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jan/15/winner-islamophobia-argo-homeland, Rachel Shabi questions Hollywood’s Golden Globes, noting in a subheading “the moral ambiguity of Homeland [USA, 2011–2020; cr. Gideon Raff] or Argo [USA, 2012; dir. Ben Affleck] is a fitting tribute to the reality of US Middle East policy.”

[77] Elizabeth Méndez Berry and Chi-hui Yang, “We Need More Critics of Color” later retitled “The Dominance of the White Male Critics,” New York Times (05 July 2019), https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/05/opinion/we-need-more-critics-of-color.html. The URL contains the artifact of the op-ed’s original title.

[78] In “Green Book’s Best Picture Win Wasn’t the Most Embarrassing Oscar Victory. This Was,” Slate (25 February 2019), https://slate.com/culture/2019/02/oscar-winning-short-film-skin-review.html, Jeffrey Bloomer suggests Oscar’s new awareness of absent diversity (not present racism) may even have contributed to films like Guy Nattiv’s Skin (USA, 2018), described as more embarrassing that Green Book, being awarded Best Live Action Short Film.

[79] Cady Lang, “The Internet Is Loving This Student’s Artistic Comeback After Her Teacher Told Her to ‘Dial Down the Feminism’,” Time (08 February 2018), https://time.com/5139980/artist-responds-to-dial-down-feminism-internet-reactions/.

[80] Felicia Rose Chavez, The Anti-racist Writing Workshop: How to Decolonize the Creative Classroom (Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2021), 6.

[81] Andrew Pulver, “Green Book Producer Sent Angry Emails to Critics of the Film,” The Guardian (26 February 2019), https://www.theguardian.com/film/2019/feb/26/green-book-producer-charles-wessler-sent-angry-emails-to-journalists-critics-vanity-fair-nbc. Jenni Miller, “The Green Book is a Movie about Racism, Made by White People for White People. See the Problem?, NBC (21 November 2018), https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/green-book-movie-about-racism-made-white-people-white-people-ncna938886.

[82] Brooke Obie, “Green Book Is A Poorly Titled White Savior Film,” Shadow and Act (16 November 2018), https://shadowandact.com/green-book-film-review-white-savior.

[83] Berry and Yang, “We Need More Critics of Color.”

[84] Racquel Gates, “The Problem With ‘Anti-Racist’ Movie Lists,” New York Times (17 July 2020), https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/17/opinion/sunday/black-film-movies-racism.html.

[85] Gates, “Problem With ‘Anti-Racist’ Movie Lists.”

[86] Canada nominated Water (Canada/India, 2005; dir. Deepa Mehta).

[87] Levy, All about Oscar, 362.

[88] Levy, All about Oscar, 363.

[89] The terms segregation and partition convey abuse of power, much like racial segregation in South Africa under Apartheid or in the United States before Civil Rights, much like Britain’s violent partition of India and Palestine, as well as the “scramble for Africa” by European imperialists and the “closing of the frontier” by U.S. ones.

[90] Fernando Solanas and Octavio Getino, “Towards a Third Cinema” (1969), in Film Manifestos and Global Cinema Culture: A Critical Anthology, ed. Scott MacKenzie (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2014), 234.

[91] Solanas and Getino, “Third Cinema,” 240.

[92] Scott Feinberg, “Oscars: Austrian Entry Joy Disqualified from International Feature Competition,” (11 November 2019), https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/race/austrias-oscars-2020-entry-joy-disqualified-international-feature-competition-1253759.

[93] Felicia Chan, “When Is a Foreign‐Language Film Not a Foreign‐Language Film? When It Has Too Much English in It: The Case of a Singapore Film and the Oscars,” Inter‐Asia Cultural Studies 9, no. 1 (2008), 97–105.

[94] Hamid Dabashi, “Introduction” in Dreams of a Nation: On Palestinian Cinema, ed. Hamid Dabashi (London: Verso, 2006), 8.

[95] Palestine is a lightning rod at the Oscars. The Academy punished Venessa Redgrave by attempting to deny her the Best Actress award for daring to support Palestinians and criticize Israel in 1978. When Pedro Almodóvar, Javier Bardem, and Penélope Cruz stood with Palestine in condemning the 2014 Israeli siege on Gaza, they anticipated retaliation. Oscar rewards explicitly Zionist films, such as Mivtsa Yonatan/Operation Thunderbolt (Israel, 1977; dir. Menahem Golan), which is so racist that it features prominently in Jacqueline Salloum’s Planet of the Arabs (USA, 2005), a “supercut” of negative stereotypes of Arabs.

[96] Erik Pedersen and Tom Tapp, “Exiled Iranian Filmmaker Bahman Ghobadi Urges Movie Academy to Include ‘One Representative from Exiled Artists’ for Oscar Consideration,” Deadline (28 September 2021), https://deadline.com/2021/09/iranian-filmmaker-bahman-ghobadi-movie-academy-exiled-artists-oscars-1234846192/.

[97] Mizrahi was nominated for Ani Ohev Otakh Rozah/I Love You Rosa (Israel, 1972) and Habayit Birkhov Chelouche/The House on Chelouche Street (Israel, 1973); Bouchareb, for Poussières de vie/Dust of Life (France/Algeria/Belgium/Germany/Hong Kong, 1995), Indigènes/Days of Glory (Algeria/France/Morocco/Belgium, 2006), and Hors-la-loi/Outside the Law (France/Algeria/Belgium/Tunisia/Italy, 2010). Oscar recognizes Arab stories, when conveyed at least partly from a Western perspective, such as Gillo Pontecorvo’s La Battaglia di Algeri/The Battle of Algiers (Algeria/Italy, 1966) and Ettore Scola’s Le Bal (France/Italy/Algeria, 1983). The only film nominated by an Arab state to win an Oscar is Z (Algeria/France 1969; dir. Costa-Gavras) with its story about Greeks set entirely in Greece and directed by a Greek filmmaker.

[98] Presumed Incompetent: The Intersections of Race and Class for Women in Academia, ed. by Gabriella Gutiérrez y Muhs, Yolanda Flores Niemann, Carmen G. González, and Angela P. Harris (Boulder: Utah State University Press, 2012). Nana Asfour, “An Oscar for the Arabs,” New York Times (02 March 2019), https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/02/opinion/arab-filmmakers-oscars.html.

Arab films must not critique United States or Israel to be nominated, as with Naji Abu Nowar’s Theeb (UAE/Qatar/Jordan/UK, 2014) on the late Ottoman Empire and Nadine Labaki’s Capharnaüm/Capernaum (Lebanon/France/USA, 2018) on Lebanon’s problems without connecting them to a civil war that was a USA-USSR proxy war.

[99] Shebaya, “Oscar-nominated ‘Good Arab’ Ziad Doueiri.”

[100] Tom Brueggemann. “On the Netflix Chart, It’s Like the Oscar Nominations Never Happened,” IndieWire (23 March 2021), https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/netflix-chart-oscar-nominations-never-213051465.html.

[101] Ryan Faughnder, “What’s an Oscar Win Worth? Studios Spend Big Even as Award’s Value Declines,” Los Angeles Times (24 February 2019), https://www.latimes.com/business/hollywood/la-fi-ct-hollywood-oscars-value-20190224-story.html.

[102] Drew Schwartz, “Which Actors Actually Benefit From the Oscars?,” Vice (23 April 2021), https://www.vice.com/en/article/g5gbxm/who-actually-benefits-from-the-oscars-how-nominations-help-white-actors-more-than-actors-of-color.

[103] Brandon K. Thorp, “What Does the Academy Value in a Black Performance?,” New York Times (19 February 2016), http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/21/movies/what-does-the-academy-value-in-a-black-performance.html.

[104] Set at the height of the Civil Rights struggle, The Help focuses on a young White woman, raised a cotton plantation, awarded a degree from a local university, and now aspiring to become a journalist. She writes a newspaper column on racism from the perspective of Black maids. She appropriates their voices without considering how she endangers them with forms of retaliation beyond her imagination.

[105] Sonia Saraiya, “Viola Davis: ‘My Entire Life Has Been a Protest’,” Vanity Fair (14 July 2020), https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2020/07/cover-story-viola-davis.

[106] Mia Mask, “Monster’s Ball,” Film Quarterly 58, no. 1 (2004), 46.

[107] Ramin Setoodeh, “Halle Berry Expresses Oscars ‘Heartbreak’ Over Historic Win,” Variety (09 September 2020), https://variety.com/2020/film/news/halle-berry-oscar-win-diversity-1234762649/.

[108] Shohat and Stam, Unthinking Eurocentrism.

[109] Levy, All about Oscar, 139.

[110] Thorp, “What Does the Academy Value?”

[111] Thorp, “What Does the Academy Value?”

[112] Thorp, “What Does the Academy Value?”

[113] hooks, “The Oppositional Gaze,” 523.

[114] Hito Steyerl, “In Defense of the Poor Image,” e-flux 10 (2009): 3.

[115] On racial politics in dubbing, see Jeff Smith, “Black Faces, White Voices: The Politics of Dubbing in Carmen Jones,” The Velvet Light Trap 51 (2003), 29–42.

[116] “White male mediocrity harms us all,” Oluo argues, when it seems that “we somehow agreed that wealthy white men are the best group to bring the rest of us prosperity, when their wealth was stolen from our labor” (6).

[117] bell hooks, “The Oppositional Gaze: Black Female Spectatorship” (1992) in Film and Theory: An Anthology, ed. Robert Stam and Toby Miller (Malden: Blackwell, 2000), 521. She makes the same point about Spike Lee’s films.

[118] Cited in Noor Brara, “Author Roxane Gay, Who Loves Art but Dislikes the Art World, Has Some Advice for Galleries: ‘Stop Being Terrible’,” Artnet News (12 April 2021), https://news.artnet.com/art-world/roxane-gay-collecting-interview-1958221.

[119] Jack Halberstam, “The Wild Beyond: With and for the Undercommons,” in Stephano Harney and Fred Moten, The Undercommons: Fugitive Planning & Black Study (Wivenhoe: Minor Compositions, 2013), 8.

[120] Cited in Christie D’Zurilla, “Jada Pinkett Smith to Boycott Oscars: ‘Begging for Acknowledgement … Diminishes Dignity’,” Los Angeles Times (18 January 2016), https://www.latimes.com/entertainment/gossip/la-et-mg-jada-pinkett-oscar-boycott-video-20160118-htmlstory.html.

[121] Cited in D’Zurilla, “Jada Pinkett Smith to Boycott Oscars.”

[122] Despite hiring Black producers (blackwashing?), the 2022 ceremony became synonymous with Will Smith slapping Chris Rock, which I discuss in “Black Pain and Punishment at the Oscars,” Counterpunch (15 April 2022), https://www.counterpunch.org/2022/04/15/black-pain-and-punishment-at-the-oscars/.

[123] Seth Abramovitch, “Oscar’s First Black Winner Accepted Her Honor in a Segregated ‘No Blacks’ Hotel in L.A., Hollywood Reporter (19 February 2015), https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/oscars-first-black-winner-accepted-774335.

[124] Yohana Desta, “Haile Gerima on Being Fêted by Hollywood—After Living His Life ‘in Opposition’ to It,” Vanity Fair (24 September 2021), https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2021/09/haile-gerima-interview.

[125] Cited in Umberto Gonzalez, “Black Panther Director Ryan Coogler Declines Academy Invitation: ‘I Don’t Buy into This Versus That’,” The Wrap (01 April 2021), https://www.thewrap.com/black-panther-director-ryan-coogler-declines-academy-invitation/.

[126] Adam B. Vary, “Oscars Nominate Most Diverse Acting Slate Ever, Including First Asian American Best Actor,” Variety (15 March 2021), https://variety.com/2021/film/news/oscars-diversity-steven-yeun-riz-ahmed-1234928862/.

[127] Adam White, “‘Congratulations to Those Men’: What Are the Oscars Even for Anymore?,” The Independent (13 January 2020), https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/features/oscars-2020-nominations-snubs-jennifer-lopez-greta-gerwig-joker-a9281866.html.

[128] For a quantitative study of a nomination’s or win’s monetary value, see: Randy A. Nelson, Michael R. Donihue, Donald M. Waldman, and Calbraith Wheaton, “What’s an Oscar Worth?,” Economic Inquiry 39, no. 1 (2001), 1–16.

[129] Aggi Ashagre, “A Conversation with the Creator of #OscarsSoWhite,” NPR (25 January 2016), https://www.npr.org/2016/01/25/464244160/a-conversation-with-the-creator-of-oscarssowhitev.

[130] “As a young man in Ethiopia, I was taken by the power of the motion picture industry that was very racist towards Africans,” remembers Haile Gerima: “I sided so much with White supremacy as a kid.” Desta, “Haile Gerima.”

[131] Chavez writes: “We spend our entire lives studying white people and assimilating accordingly. […] Where, when, can we venture to sound like ourselves?” (32).

[132] Chavez, Anti-racist Writing Workshop, 46.

[133] Juan Francisco Salazar and Amalia Córdova, “Imperfect Media and the Poetics of Indigenous Video in Latin America,” Global Indigenous Media, ed. Pamela Wilson and Michelle Stewert(Durham: Duke University Press, 2008), 39–57.

[134] To the Academy’s credit, it published Littlefeather’s speech on the Oscar YouTube channel (02 October 2008), https://www.youtube.com/watch? v=2QUacU0I4yU.

[135] As cited in C. Mandler, “Sacheen Littlefeather Receives Formal Apology For Mistreatment At 1973 Oscars,” CBS News (15 August, 2022), https://www.cbsnews.com/news/sacheen-littlefeather-receives-apology-for- mistreatment-at-1973-oscars/.

[136] For the letter, see Rebecca Sun, “Academy Apologizes to Sacheen Littlefeather for Her Mistreatment at the 1973 Oscars,” Hollywood Reporter (15 August, 2022), https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie- news/sacheen-littlefeather-oscars-apology-1235198863/.

[137] Andrew Van Dam, “The Movies Most Often Assigned in College, and More!” The Washington Post (09 September 2022), https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/09/09/films-assigned-college/.

[138] Robert P. Kolker, Film, Form, and Culture, fourth edition (New York” Prentice-Hall, 2016), 229.

[139] Open Syllabus, OS2.6 dataset (accessed 11 September 2022), https://blog.opensyllabus.org/movie-lab/.

Jom guides the lives and behaviors of thousands of people in West Africa. For them, it is Jom which makes a man, and neither his family origins nor his wealth. Jom protects us against the absurdity of life. It keeps us away from lie and cowardice. It saves us from humiliations and offences … Jom is beyond God and Evil.

In African society, the “griot” is the trustee of the past and takes care of traditional values. He is also an endless source where painters, writers, historians, filmmakers, archivists, story-tellers and musicians can come to feed their imagination. His knowledge, memory and imagination make him a unique character. In old times, he was tutor to the Prince or counsellor to the King or the Chief. During wars, he would be at the front, at the side of the Army’s Chief. This musician and storyteller participated in everything in a man’s life, from his birth until his death. He was Continuity.

Like Khaly, he is stronger than Death and Time. He survives all eras and is the privileged witness who makes History.

I am not a book
I am not a chant or the imagination…
I am the people’s memory
I am History’s memory.
Those who write come to me
But their chant is cold and rational,

he says.

Synopsis

The story begins in 1980. A strike just burst out. Facing one another are Mr. Diop, President-Director General of a big firm, and the firm’s workers, some of which are Khaly’s friends. However, these very workers oppose one another in two antagonist groups. One fights for better salaries and the reinstatement of abusively laid-off workers. The group leader’s name is Madjeumbe.

The second group, which is more flexible, is led by N’Dougoutte; the latter accepts the management’s new proposals.

A number of workers from the first group convene a meeting in the house of one of them. Khaly the “griot” plays guitar and sings. His words and music are full of magic and take us back into the past to tell us about the story of Prince Dieri, who chose to die rather than lose his Jom.

1900. Dieri Dior Ndella Fall, a young aristocrat full of enthusiasm, travels across what was previously a realm and has now been taken up by the colonial administration. He is proud and nationalist and cannot forget he is the inheritor of King Samba Yaya Fall, who has been overthrown by the same administration, and who took his life in St. Louis in Senegal in order to safeguard his Jom. Dieri waits for the right time to rebel and by so, carry on the tradition of those who refuse to submit.

One day, Dieri is notified a meeting by Commandant Chautemps, a colonial authority. The young prince sees this as a provocation. With a number of “griots,” among whom is Khaly, and three faithful warriors, Dieri goes to Commandant Chautemps’ place. He enters alone into the Administrator’s Office where Chautemps is with two guards. Dieri provokes them and fights with them. He is almost subdued when one of his warriors, Sarithie, comes helping and saves him from a humiliating position. Finally, Dieri and Sarithie kill Chautemps and the two guards. Then, as calmly as if nothing had happened, they leave the residence and leave panic behind them. The griots acclaim them with a song. And Khaly says the poem which will remain.

This assassination, which is a political one for some and a criminal one for others, is seen by the Governor as a stupid defiance and one which in their eyes must be severely punished.

He refuses the pressions of those who advise him to destroy Dieri’s group. He chooses to humiliate Dieri in front of his numerous followers. An agreement binds him to Canar Fall, a relative of Dieri’s and a prince like him. During a conference with his subordinates, his counsels and Prince Canar Fall, the Governor orders the latter to take Dieri alive.

Dieri and his followers fight with Canar Fall’s warriors, who succeed in taking Dieri alive when all his friends have died. Dieri must stay alive, since this is the Governor’s order. Knowing that he has been saved in order to be humiliated, Prince Dieri takes his life.

We are back in 1980, with the strikers, their wives, Madjeumbe, and Khaly the Immortal who keeps on playing guitar and singing, as in trance. The strikers listen to his music. They are fascinated by the story of Prince Dieri who has become a model which embodies their dreams of grandeur.

There is a general meeting with all the strikers. Madjeumbe and N’Dougoutte, supported by their respective followers, try to impose their views. As always, those who do not know what to decide, reinforce the radical tendency, i.e. Madjeumbe’s, against N’Dougoutte’s group. A delegation is set up.

Mr. Diop sees the delegation and proposes a “special salary rise” only destined to the delegation members. The latter reject such an iniquitous offer. For them, accepting it would dishonor them and betray their followers.

Khaly has witnessed all this and walks about the town. He is at times with the poorest and at times with the wealthiest. We see him at Mr. Diop’s. He is there when Mrs. Diop treats her maid badly. This situation reminds him of another. Khaly goes back into the past. We are in 1935-1945. There are dead trees, dried up lakes and the savanna is arid and swept by a hot, dry wind.

There is no water, and there is no work in the provinces. People are starving and wells are dry. Countrymen and farmers, all men and women take to the road towards the towns.

We see St. Louis in Senegal, an old, beautiful city where a number of young Senegalese come to complete their studies. This town has created an elite which intends to keep its privileges, with bureaucrats and businessmen. They are a cast that wants to have domestics. The walo-walo, pastoral people and farmers, offer themselves as servants.

Young peasant girls, who have left their villages because draught, wander about streets of St. Louis in the company of Khaly-Of-AII-Times. They work for the rich ladies of St. Louis. They have become servants or washerwomen. They suffer those ladies’ raggings and mockings, and the hardship.

Madam Sall, a well-known lady in the high society of St. Louis, in order to enhance her name and prestige, decides to call, from Dakar, the great Koura Thiaw, the most famous songstress and dancer.

Koura Thiaw quickly realizes that all ostentation displayed for her, hides the misery of domestics who come from distant walo, which is also her own native place. As days pass by, a warm friendship and understanding takes place between her and exploited servants.

There comes the day when Koura Thiaw is expected to sing and dance on the city public square. A communion rises between the artist and the audience. Koura Thiaw sings the walo-walo song:

Oh you great ladies of St. Louis,
It will never be said enough,
There is no such thing as a stupid work,
There are only stupid people.
The teaching remains true;
Even as far as servants are concerned,
Those good girls who come from the walo
like all workers
Sell their working capacities.
So, please, be nicer to them…

All burst out with joy. And so does Khaly, the “griot”. Koura Thiaw has just restored those people’s dignity. Since that day, this protest song is hummed byeveryone every day when the sun rises.

We are back in 1980. Khaly takes us back into the present. We are at the Diop’s, in their living room. The “griot” is humming the walo-walo song. The strike is still on, unsolved. However, N’Dougoutte’s group is beginning to weaken.

Mr. Diop is in his office ; we can hear the noise of the telex. Urgent messages are piling up. Things are getting worse. The President Director General’s associates want the worker’s movement to be stopped so that Mr. Diop does not lose his partners’ trust.

Mr. Diop is panicking. He starts off a sordid corruption plan. Under the fallacious pretext of contributing to domestic charges, he offers money to Mrs. Madjeumbe. Then he goes to visit the leader’s father, an old, Muslim devotee, tries to corrupt the old man and does not hesitate to libel his son. He fails.

On the other hand, the second group, who cannot suffer any longer the deprivations caused by the long strike, is beginning to break away. Mr. Diop is going to take advantage of this.

He offers money to N’Dougoutte and his followers. Some of them, who have been given the money, accept to go back to work.

At the firm’s entrance, Madjeumbe and his friends are useless strike piquets.

At a distance, Mr. Diop witnesses the two groups opposing each other and N’Dougoutte’s victory. This means he’s won. And he will remain at his post.

As always, Khaly is here too. Nothing escapes him. He observes and will remember every fact, every gesture,

every word.

N’Dougoutte’s two wives have heard about their husband’s behavior; they leave home, because they prefer to undergo all kind of deprivations rather than seeing their husband betraying and failing the Jom.

Madjeumbe and his friends set up a march around the city. N’Dougoutte’s wives join them.

Khaly walks at the front of the procession and sings, while playing guitar:

My ears can hear the past
And my words will go to those to come
I say money and strength go hand in hand
I say that him who has them wants to keep them
and him who lacks them wants to acquire them
I say that wealth as well as misery
can generate folly
And Jom is nobody’s prerogative.

People listen to this today Africa troubadour. Passersby come closer to the workers’ march. Khaly’s voice dies off.

– Ababacar Samb-Makharam

In 2009, during my second year as a grad student at Brown University, Angela Davis came to deliver a lecture on mass incarceration, the prison-industrial complex, and the insidious forms of neo-slavery enshrined in the 13^th amendment. I vividly remember how she cut the figure of a beautiful black pasionaria intensely involved, with other scholars, activists, and community leaders across the country, in the prison abolition movement. The talk was billed as a public event and, as would be expected, the room was filled to maximum capacity, mostly with notebook-clutching students, a learned assembly of grey-haired, stern-looking faculty, and a handful of “awed” community members from the greater Providence area. 

Davis started off with a joke about the midseason “trade” of then aging NBA superstar Shaquille O’Neal, from the Phoenix Suns to the Cleveland Cavaliers, to segue into the topic of her lecture: “trading” black bodies in the open “market,” whether you’re filthy rich or dirt poor, is just business as usual, for such a practice is woven into the fabric of American society. For over an hour, Davis enlightened her riveted audience about the American gulag archipelago and the vested interests handsomely profiteering from it. Her forceful words were imbued with added significance, given not just the details then emerging about the Brown brothers’ capital ventures in the Slave Trade, but also the larger domestic context – the so-called post-racial era heralded by the election of Barack Obama to the White House.

Then it was time for a little Q/A session. The first to boldly step toward the microphone was an ex-convict, just out on parole. He had come up to College Hill for the express purpose of handing a “message from the grassroots” to Angela Davis, the gist whereof was: “You’re needed more down there in underserved communities than up here, on this sheltered Ivy League campus. If you agree with me on this, then follow me, let’s go to my neighborhood, sister. Right now. Anyway, I’m out of here.” On that note, the ex-convict abruptly left the lecture room, even as a bemused Davis entreated him to stay, at least stick around for a while – but he was having none of that.

For a few seconds thereafter, an awkward silence hung over the brightly lit and warmly heated lecture room, the kind of silence that usually punctuates a “touché, gotcha” moment during a debate. The ex-convict did more than breach etiquette or punch a hole in the cozy bubble of academia: he had laid bare the paradox lying deep at the heart of scholarly engagements with the plight of racialized minorities, as such an academicization tends to further drive a wedge between the latter and the wellness resources available to treat their pain and suffering, including the healing words of a stellar mind such as Davis’s, as beyond their reach as the overpriced drugs, and other therapies, that such underprivileged communities can ill afford to medicate on. The crucial point is not that Angela Davis was presented with a false binary: be another sellout pimping white guilt or be real and get down with the people; it was rather that we were all there to watch Angela Davis, but only that ex-con came to see her, and no sooner did he leave than everyone saw, then and there, what was so plain to him: a bright and bold intellect turned into a showcase piece, like an alabaster bust trotted out for casual looks and idle chatter in the boudoirs of academia, whilst all around “the wretched of the earth” keep wallowing in grief and misery. 

In Fanon: Yesterday, Today Hassane Mezine achieves an effect similar to the collective epiphany furtively experienced by Davis’s audience in that Brown University lecture hall. Completed in 2018-2019, and timed for worldwide release in 2021 to celebrate Fanon’s sixtieth death anniversary, this latest documentary compels viewers to unravel the sphinx-like enigma of a towering figure swaddled into so many readings, so many interpretations and polemical discourses, perennially pitting postmodern ironists against postcolonial liberationists, the “right-on critics,” as the late Stuart Hall derisively called the latter camp. Indeed, as the visual narrative unfolds, shot by shot you begin to feel, somewhere in the back of your head, that telltale tingle, that eye-opening “Aha moment” that makes you wonder: could it be that I never got to see Fanon before this film? Could it be that, all along, I had been looking, unwittingly, at his anamorphic image? A caveat is in order, though: far from hyping his debut feature as showing Fanon in his true colors, “unadulterated,” as it were, a point that the restored, rephotographed, or colorized archival footage should be enough to render moot; far from claiming that he is hammering back into shape the countless warped images in currency today as so many tokens of a smugly glib radical chic, Mezine does the simplest, most sensible thing: seek out fragments of past memories and collect testimonies that, once edited into a finely textured visual tapestry, can provide a “contrast material” fit to reveal Fanon’s abiding spectral presence.

Yet in this regard, Fanon: Yesterday, Today still doesn’t mark any significant break from the existing corpus of films on the Martinique-born thinker. Isaac Julien’s multilayered performative documentary, Frantz Fanon: Black Skin, White Mask constantly toys with the “uncertain dark” Fanon left in his wake, as Homi Bhabha so eloquently put it in “Remembering Fanon,” a spectrality Julien conveys through backfill “auratic” lighting, visual collages, double exposures, superimpositions, and the double estrangement effect induced by Colin Salmon’s thickly accented British and tall height. Even the interspersed voiceover narration over grainy or digitally remastered archival images, however unobtrusive and minimal, leaves one with a nagging feeling of déjà vu. Ditto for Mezine’s “groundings” à la Walter Rodney with talking heads across generations and continents, each in their own way indebted to the provocative essayist who, in Black Skin, White Masks was the first ever to make a compelling case for imbecilic racism, and not race, as more than skin-deep, and to the “warrior-silex,” as Césaire hailed his former student in a moving poetic eulogy, who lit the dark caves of anticolonial struggles with the incandescence of tridimensional dialectics. In all these aspects, nothing unprecedented or never seen before with Mezine’s film. So what is it, then, that makes Fanon: Yesterday, Today stand out? What sets it apart from the run of the mill, especially in this day and age when hardly a week goes by without something on Fanon being released, be it a literary or filmic riff on his works, a graphic novel, a comic book, a scholarly monograph, a memoir by a former comrade or colleague, a collection of essays, or whatever obscure secondary material filed away in library catalogs, and left for an army of future doctoral students to slog through?

For one thing, Mezine stretches wide the arc of documentary narration to craft what he calls a “chronobiography,” thereby creating an overlap between memory and history, between the intimate recollections of Fanon’s contemporaries (Abdelhamid Mehri, Jacques Ladsous, Marie-Jeanne Manuellan, Olivier Fanon,  Mohamed Salah Seddik, Ousmane Dan Gadalima, Lylian Kesteloot, Arnoldo Palacios) and the critical reflections on his renewed currency (Raphaël Confiant, Flavio Almada, Maboula Soumahoro, Houria Bouteldja, Cornel West, Ibrahim Diori, Salima Ghezali, Masixola Mlandu, Sama Jabr). This testimonial diptych is meant not so much to echo Stuart Hall’s seminal 1986 essay “Why Fanon? Why Now?” as to underscore a paradigm shift, away from concerns about Fanon’s conjunctural “timeliness,” toward a clear focus on his timelessness. However, Fanon’s is not the “eternal relevance” of the classic assured of a permanent audience, and it is in this respect that Hassane Mezine’s documentary approach is truly innovative, as his peripatetic camera relentlessly ferrets out all the scattered traces, tropes, motifs, all the intimations of Fanon’s haunting presence that, at this latter-day juncture, crystallize into a global iconomy of protest and decolonial resistance, from the Indigènes de la République in France to the “Rhodes Must Fall Movement” in Cape Town, South Africa. This lends a polyphonic quality to the interactive segments Mezine pieces together with an ear tuned to their differential speech modes, speed regimes, and time lags, as each interviewee sustains the tempo of his filmic chronotope at their own pace, on their own terms. In so doing, the documentarist charts a planetary ecosystem of sounds, texts, images, a vibrant chorus of testimonial voices across the space-time warp of the Fanonian galaxy. As a result, Fanon: Yesterday, Today is perhaps the first film to draw, out of the shifting contours of global dissent, the sharp features of Frantz Fanon’s ever lurking face, with those signature unflinching, questioning eyes, but absent the commemorative agit-prop pathos of “militant” hagiography or the “archive fever” of postcolonial historiography.

All of the Helen Rose products are not tree-nut ingredient free, but the majority are. The purpose of this was to offer an alternative to people who suffer from tree nut allergies or that wanted an alternative to Shea butter. My daughter was suffering from terrible eczema and Shea butter-based products just seemed to be making it worse. I started doing research and found out that people that have certain types of allergies can have adverse effects from using Shea butter. I searched for a product that would hydrate similarly but I couldn’t find anything so I started doing research to make my own blend.

I really love using Shea butter for my body, especially rough parts like feet, knees, and elbows. I really needed alternative for my face. My Cupuacu butter blend is hydrating like a butter but light like a cream.

The idea for vegan friendly products is a combination of my own allergies and serving the community in which I live. I am allergic to beeswax, so I had to create products without it. A product containing beeswax is NOT considered vegan friendly, so it just happens that my products are vegan friendly by removing this ingredient. I also live in the Pacific Northwest and a lot of my customers are vegan, so it just made sense to go that route.

How do Helen Rose products benefit the skin?

Helen Rose products are designed to heal holistically. My products are designed to heal the skin and support mental health and mood. A lot of times when we are experiencing skin disruption it is a direct result of stress on the body. Stress and anxiety can lead to rashes, acne outbreaks, eczema episodes and hair loss.

The ingredients in Helen Rose products regulate your skin’s oil production so as not to produce to much or too little and balance the microbiome (protective barrier) on the surface of the skin. My products also penetrate that top layer of the skin to reduce fine lines, fade scars, improve tone, smooth hyperpigmentation, and retain moisture.

Your skin is flawless. Is Helen Rose your secret? What has been your skin care journey?

Thank you! One of the most valuable lessons I learned from my mom was to care for myself on the inside and outside. What we put inside our bodies and our minds has a direct affect on the condition and appearance of our skin.

Secret 1 – I drink TONS of water. I don’t drink any soda and I rarely drink juice or coffee. If I want a pick me up, I will drink tea but mostly I drink water.

Secret 2 – A consistent skincare routine. Just like diet and exercise, consistency is key to healthy, glowing skin. It may take time to find what works for you, but always find time to cleanse, tone, and moisturize.

Secret 3 – Hot Yoga. I believe that any type of consistent exercise is good for our skin. I really love hot yoga because of the benefits for my body and my mind. It’s a great way to keep my mobility, flush out excess toxins, and regulate my nervous system.

My skincare journey starts with a girl with very dry, very sensitive skin. I was relentlessly teased in school for my ashy legs and chapped lips. I NEVER want my kids to have to go through the teasing that I went through. At that time there weren’t any natural skincare products in the stores that my parents shopped at. Natural ingredients weren’t really a priority, but that’s why I think my skin was irritated all the time. I would wash my face and get dry, flaky patches, especially in the cold weather months.

As a young adult I just started trying natural remedies instead of relying on chemical heavy prescriptions from doctors. Shea and Cocoa butter became my go to moisturizers for my body, but I struggled to find anything that worked on my face.

Helen Rose offers such an extensive range of ingredients and scents. Does that mean you have products suitable for every skin type and skin concern? 

I wouldn’t say every type, but Helen Rose products are safe to be used on many skin types including dry, combination and oily skin. My products also soothe and heal many skin concerns such as eczema, dermatitis, psoriasis, hyperpigmentation, scars, stretch marks, and even help tattoos heal at record speed.

The products are scented with pure, therapeutic grade essential oils that each have unique healing properties for the skin and support mood.

As an entrepreneur, how did you succeed bringing your vision of such a unique, top quality product line to reality?

I feel like it’s still a work in progress, but I’ve gotten to this point by combining my wildly active imagination with passion and consistent hard work. At times that work can be grueling – 16 hours days, working 3 jobs, caring for my children, but I love the work so much that it keeps me going. I have also had a TON of support from my community. Helen Rose Skincare would not exist at all without the support from my friends, colleagues, mentors, family, and customers.

I really tap into the knowledge of the people around me. One of the best things I decided to do was hire a business coach when I first started. Admitting and accepting help is key in being successful.

I’ve always felt that I had something to offer. Through this journey I have felt imposter syndrome many times. Like – who do I think that I am? But one thing I’ve learned in my healing journey is to challenge negative self-talk. Keeping a positive attitude even in challenging times really helps me focus and get the work done.

The link between Om Thrive’s healing wellness and Helen Rose skincare is ingenious. How did you discover the connection between skincare and wellness?  

I was introduced to this concept because of aromatherapy. I struggle with anxiety and depression, but I am very sensitive to medication. I’m also allergic to most pain medications so I’ve had to find alternative pain management solutions. I’ve used mind/body practice and aromatherapy for years to address my anxiety, stay grounded and manage pain. When I was developing my scent selection, I really wanted to focus on what the scents can do for your mood since this was going to be something that you are using on a consistent basis and rubbing all over your body.

Like I mentioned earlier, when we are stressed out, we may see manifestations of that on our skin, nails, and hair. When I am feeling depressed, my skin tends to get dry, especially on my face and I’ll start getting flaky patches. But when I’m happy my skin GLOWS.

How do Helen Rose products assist the domestic abuse survivors they are donated to through Om Thrive?

I founded Om Thrive in 2018 before I started selling Helen Rose Skincare products. Om Thrive’s original mission was to provide healing yoga practice and wellness services to survivors of domestic violence. I am a DV survivor and yoga was pivotal to me leaving my abusive marriage and healing. One of the reasons I started selling Helen Rose Skincare products was to have a revenue stream to fund Om Thrive services. Along with accepting donations for Om Thrive, a portion of the sales from Helen Rose Skincare are donated to support survivors. We have done this work by hosting virtual and in-person yoga classes, providing stipends to pay for yoga classes for our participants at the studio of their choice, purchasing yoga supplies for our community, and paying our instructors a fair rate.

In 2022 we plan to pivot this work to begin supplying DV emergency shelters and resource centers with Helen Rose Skincare products.

What motivates you to stay so committed to uplifting your community?

I stay motivated because I am paying forward all of the help, love and support that I received in my time of need. Humans need human kindness.

I have goals, and dreams, and aspirations. This company was named after my mother who passed away in 2019. She was such an inspiration to so many people. I owe it to her legacy and the legacy I’m leaving for my children for this company to be successful.

Black skin has been devalued for centuries. What effect do you see on your customers and community, by providing them with products that enable them to properly care for their skin?

I see pride. I see community. I see that I am an inspiration to others. I live in the community that I grew up in and my peers are so excited for me and eager to see how far I can take this.

“The events of the recent past have illuminated how interconnected our worlds are. Through it all and across the globe, the collective vision of freedom has come into sharp focus,” said AFF Executive Director and NYAFF Founder Mahen Bonetti. “This year’s festival takes a look at the past, while capturing the present pulse and looking forward to envision a brighter future.”

Opening Night marks the New York premiere of Gessica Généus’s feature directorial debut Freda, framed by the ever-present violence and dangers surrounding a family’s life in Haiti and their longing to escape it. Tanzanian filmmaker Amil Shivji’s Centerpiece selection Tug of War spotlights a rebellious young revolutionary who falls for an Indian-Zanzibari girl escaping an arranged marriage.

Two festival features are U.S. premieres: Charles Castella’s Abderrahmane Sissako, un cinéaste à l’Opéra, chronicling acclaimed director Sissako’s unique task of creating an opera about the history of Africa at the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris, with music composed by Damon Alban, leader of the bands Blur and Gorillaz; and Ayaanle, directed by Ahmed Farah, which follows a series of unlikely events befalling the title character, who goes from optimistic actor to the most wanted man in Kenya. The festival is also proud to host the U.S. premieres of two short films: Johanna Makabi’s Notre mémoire, featuring Black Girl star Mbissine Thérèse Diop’s reflections on being a Black actress in the 1960s; and Shaka – iNkosi Yamakhosi by Manzini Zungu and Nick Cloete, a profound tale of resilience depicting the coming of age of a great warrior and king, Shaka Zulu.

Other highlights include the New York premiere of Juwaa, Nganji Mutiri’s drama about a mother and son reflecting on the events of a traumatic night many years before; and Aïssa Maïga’s documentary Marcher sur l’eau (Above Water), following the process of convincing an NGO to build a well in a Nigerien village, saving many residents from having to travel several kilometers each day to gather what exists 200 meters below their feet.

“Cinema of Liberation: From Inception and Execution to Exhibition,” a master class by veteran Ethiopian filmmaker, Haile Gerima, on Saturday, May 14, at 11:30am will teach the role of film in propelling forth freedom movements and arming viewers to take up the mantle of change. The event takes place in the Amphitheater at the Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center. 

NYAFF will present a Town Hall at Lincoln Center’s David Rubenstein Atrium on Wednesday, May 11 at 7:30 p.m., featuring African and diaspora artists displaying and discussing work that explores the festival’s theme Visions of Freedom. Participants include hair stylist and Hair by Susy founder Susan Oludele; dancer, lawyer, actor and pianist Justin Lynch; Singer, songwriter, and international DJ Nikki Kynard; and actress and director of the Opening Night film, Freda, Gessica Généus.

An interactive digital art exhibition, featuring work by the artist Zainab Aliyu, which celebrates the festival theme will run in the Amphitheater from May 12-17.

Tickets go on sale April 29 at noon ET. In-Theater ticket prices are $15 for the general public; $12 for students, seniors, and persons with disabilities; and $10 for FLC members. See more and save with the $59 All-Access Pass or the $25 Student All-Access Pass. Tickets for the Opening Night Party in the Frieda and Roy Furman Gallery in the Walter Reade Theater are $200 and can be purchased at africanfilmny.org starting Friday, April 22.

Virtual Cinema prices are $10 for the general public; $8 for FLC members. See more and save with the 4-Film Bundle for just $20 (approx. 50% savings!).

The festival continues at Maysles Documentary Center in Harlem from May 19 to 22 and culminates at the Brooklyn Academy of Music under the name Film Africa from May 27 to June 2 during Dance Africa.

The programs of AFF are made possible by the generous support of the National Endowment for the Arts, New York State Council on the Arts, Bradley Family Foundation, Domenico Paulon Foundation, NYC & Company, French Cultural Services, Manhattan Portage, Black Hawk Imports, Essentia Water, South African Consulate General, National Film and Video Foundation, Motion Picture Enterprises, and Royal Air Maroc. 

FILMS & DESCRIPTIONSThe Opening Night premiere of Freda will take place at the Walter Reade Theater (165 W. 65th Street).
All other films will screen at the Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center (144 W. 65th Street).

Opening Night
Freda
New York Premiere
Gessica Généus, 2021, Haiti/France/Benin, 93m
Haitian Creole, English, and French with English subtitles

Freda lives with her family in a poor neighborhood in Port-au-Prince. They make ends meet thanks to their small street shop. Faced with precarious living conditions and the rise of violence in Haiti, each of them wonders whether to stay or leave, but Freda is determined to believe in the future of her country.
Thursday, May 12 at 6:30pm (Q&A with Gessica Généus)
Monday, May 16th at 4:15pm

Centerpiece
Tug of War / Vuta n’kuvute
New York Premiere
Amil Shivji, 2021, Tanzania/South Africa/Germany/Qatar, 92m
English and Swahili with English subtitles

Denge, a young freedom fighter, meets Yasmin, an Indian-Zanzibari woman, in the middle of the night as she is on her way to be married. Passion and revolution ensue in this coming-of-age political love story set in the final years of British colonial Zanzibar.

Preceded by:
Notre mémoire
U.S. Premiere
Johanna Makabi, 2021, France, 12m
French with English subtitles
Mbissine Thérèse Diop played the starring role in Ousmane Sembène’s landmark first feature, 1966’s Black Girl (La Noire de…). Today, she looks back on her experience as a Black actress in the 1960s.
Friday, May 13th at 6:30pm (Q&A with Amil Shivji)
Monday, May 16th at 2:00pm

Abderrahmane Sissako, un cinéaste à l’Opéra
U.S. Premiere
Charles Castella, 2021, France, 55m
French with English subtitles

With Le Vol du boli (The Flight of the Boli), filmmaker Abderrahmane Sissako takes up an unexpected artistic challenge: to stage, at the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris, an opera based on the history of Africa. English musician Damon Albarn, front man of Blur and the virtual band Gorillaz, composes and conducts the music. The two artists from ostensibly different universes join forces to design a work as powerful as it is engaged.

Preceded by:
Shaka – iNkosi Yamakhosi
U.S. Premiere
Manzini Zungu & Nick Cloete, 2020, South Africa, 15m
Zulu with English subtitles
A meek young boy, Manzini, is attacked by three bullies on his way home from school in an incident that almost costs him his life. Manzini confesses to his Gogo (grandmother) his desire to quit school. In response, she narrates a profound tale of resilience, chronicling the coming of age of a great warrior and King, Shaka Zulu, to inspire her grandson through the strength of his lineage.
Sunday, May 15th at 4:30pm (Q&A with Manzini Zungu, Charles Castella and Baba Sissoko)

Ayaanle
U.S. Premiere
Ahmed Farah, 2022, Somalia/Kenya, 90m
English, Somali, English, and Swahili with English subtitles

Ayaanle is a 21-year-old man living in Nairobi who aspires to become an actor and conquer Hollywood. Despite his conservative upbringing and impoverished background, he remains optimistic about making it in the film industry, and hopes to emulate his hero Denzel Washington. His life is turned upside down after a series of unlikely events that lead him to become the most wanted man in Kenya, linked with terrorist activities across East Africa.
Sunday, May 15th at 7:00pm (Q&A with Ahmed Farah)

For Maria Ebun Pataki
Damilola Orimogunje, 2020, Nigeria, 75m
English and Yoruba with English subtitles

After the complicated birth of her first child, Maria, Derin (Meg Otanwa) becomes withdrawn from family life, unable to engage in the celebrations around her newborn. Her bewildered mother-in-law insists that she is not a good enough parent, while her increasingly worried husband Afolabi (Gabriel Afolayan) watches from the sidelines as she becomes a shadow of herself in this honest but empathetic account of postpartum depression.
Virtual – May 13 – 17, 2022

The Gravedigger’s Wife
Khadar Ayderus Ahmed, 2021, Somalia/France/Germany/Finland, 83m
Somali with English subtitles

Guled and Nasra are a loving couple, living on the outskirts of Djibouti City with their teenage son, Mahad. However, they are facing difficult times: Nasra urgently needs an expensive surgery to treat a chronic kidney disease. Guled is already working hard as a gravedigger to make ends meet: how can they find the money to save Nasra and keep the family together?
Virtual – May 13 – 17, 2022

Jom, The Story of a People
Ababacar Samb-Makharam, 1982, Senegal/West Germany, 80m
Wolof with English subtitles

Senegalese filmmaker Ababacar Samb-Makharam said, “‘Jom’ is a Wolof word which has no equivalent in English or French. ‘Jom’ means courage, dignity, respect… It is the origin of all virtues.” To celebrate the concept, Samb-Makharam uses the griot (oral historian) as the nexus of multiple stories drawing from Senegal’s collective memory. To inspire striking workers, the griot tells of a legendary prince, Dieri Dior Ndella, who sacrificed his life during colonialism, and Koura Thiaw, an entertainer who took up the cause of oppressed domestics in the 1940s, with both becoming heroes to their people.
Tuesday, May 17 at 7:00pm (Q&A with Ghaël Samb Sall)

Juju Stories
Abba T. Makama, Michael Omonua & C. J. Obasi, 2021, Nigeria/France, 84m
English and Pidgin with English subtitles

Juju Stories explores juju in contemporary Lagos through three stories. In “Love Potion,” by Omonua, an unmarried woman agrees to use juju to find herself an ideal mate. In “Yam,” by Makama, consequences arise when a street urchin picks up seemingly discarded money from the roadside. In “Suffer the Witch,” by Obasi, love and friendship turn into obsession when a young college woman attracts her crush’s interest.
Virtual – May 13 – 17, 2022

Juwaa
New York Premiere
Nganji Mutiri, 2021, Belgium/The Democratic Republic of the Congo, 85m
French and Swahili with English subtitles

Shot in Belgium and the DRC, Juwaa is a subtly powerful drama offering African characters rarely seen on screens. Years after a traumatic night, a son and a mother reconcile and slowly peel away the layers of their complex relationship.
Monday, May 16th at 6:30pm (Q&A with Nganji Mutiri)

Above Water / Marcher sur l’eau
Aïssa Maïga, 2021, Niger/France/Belgium, 89m
French with English subtitles

From one end of the globe to the other, water is becoming increasingly scarce. For a billion people, access to safe drinking water is almost nonexistent—a crisis with huge consequences. As a result, millions of families spend their lives trying to get access to this basic necessity. Houlaye, 12 years old, lives in a village in Tatis, Niger, and walks several kilometers every day to fetch water. It is abundant during the rainy season, but in short supply during the dry season. However, a source exists just 200 meters below the ground. When Houlaye’s aunt Suri convinces an NGO to build a well in the village, it brings the promise of renewal for those men and women who, unknowingly, had been walking on water all their lives.
Saturday, May 14th at 3:30pm (Q&A with Aïssa Maïga)

Simply Black / Tout simplement noir
Jean-Pascal Zadi & John Wax, 2020, France, 90m
French with English subtitles

JP, a failed 40-year-old actor, decides to organize the first large-scale Black solidarity march in France. But his often-farcical encounters with influential personalities from the community and the self-serving support he receives from French humorist Fary find him torn between his desire to be in the limelight and his genuine commitment as an activist.
Saturday, May 16th at 8:30pm (Q&A with Jean-Pascal Zadi)
Tuesday, May 17th at 4:00pm

The Sun Rises in The East
Tayo Giwa, 2021, USA, 58m

The Sun Rises in The East chronicles the birth, rise, and legacy of The East, a pan-African cultural organization founded in 1969 by teens and young adults in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. Led by educator and activist Jitu Weusi, The East embodied Black self-determination, building dozens of institutions, including its own African-centered school, food co-op, newsmagazine, publishing house, record label, restaurant, clothing shop, and bookstore. The organization hosted world-famous jazz musicians and poets at its highly sought-after performance venue, and it served as an epicenter for political contemporaries such as the Black Panther Party, the Young Lords, and the Congress of Afrikan People, as well as comrades across Africa and the Caribbean. In effect, The East built an independent Black nation in the heart of central Brooklyn. The Sun Rises in The East is the first feature-length documentary to explore The East and its continued influence on the fabric of Black Brooklyn. The film also examines challenges that led to The East’s eventual dissolution, including its gender politics, financial struggles, and government surveillance. Featuring interviews with leaders of The East, historians, and people who grew up in the organization as children, The Sun Rises in The East delivers an exhilarating and compelling vision for today’s movement for racial justice, showing just how much is possible.

Preceded by:
Precious Hair & Beauty
John Ogunmuyiwa, 2021, UK, 11m
New York Premiere
English and Yoruba with English subtitles
John Ogunmuyiwa’s vibrant short is an ode to the mundanity and madness of the high street, told through the window of an African hair salon in London.
Sunday, May 15th at 2:00pm (Q&A with Tayo Giwa)

African Voices in Changing Climates: Post-Production and Social Impact Cinema
Mayors Make Movies, an initiative by Let’s Talk About Water, was created to promote wider engagement and participation in water policy and water science communication through short-film production amongst mayors, youths, and filmmakers in cities across the African continent. This program presents films created through the MMM initiative, and discussions with Linda Lillenfield, creator and director of Let’s Talk About Water; members from the Consortium of Universities for the Advancement of Hydrologic Science, Inc. (CUAHSI): and Alain Gomis, filmmaker and founder of Centre Yennenga in Dakar, Senegal.

Senegal – Keur MassarCentre Yennenga, 2022, Senegal, 5m
Wolof and French with English subtitles
In Keur Massar, Senegal, following annual flooding, residents and community organizers show the effects on their lives and homes of poor infrastructure and the increasing impact of climate change. This short film shows how the residents live with and through the flooding, and explores the causes of and possible solutions to this crisis.

Grand DakarCentre Yennenga, 2022, Senegal, 5m
Wolof and French with English subtitles
Residents of Grand Dakar renting apartments in big, crowded buildings elect to use public water taps for their everyday needs rather than the city’s system. This short film explores the economic reasons behind their decision, and the challenges posed by municipal water pricing to the city’s residents.

The Gambia – Banjul
Mystic Production, 2022, The Gambia, 4m
Pidgin and English with English subtitles
In Banjul, a group of activists and members of the youth council speak about the need for decentralization of water management in the city and the country at large. Mayor Roheyatou Lowe focuses on the importance of women as primary water users, and invites the aid of partners interested in working on water in Banjul.

Morocco – Chefchaouen
Rachid Kasmi, 2022, Morocco, 5m
Arabic and French with English subtitles
In Chefchaouen, Morocco, a group of students learn about water resource management while walking around their city. Mayor Mohamed Sefiani leads us through Chefchaouen’s conservation efforts for its drought-prone region, and explains what could be done to improve water access in the city.

Interview of Secretary-General Elong-Mbassi
Rachid Kasmi, 2022, Morocco, 5m
French with English subtitles
Secretary-General of the United Cities and Local Governments – Africa (UCLG-A), Jean Pierre Elong-Mbassi opens a conversation on the role of African Mayors in leading local climate action and water security. 

Interview of Aziza Akhmouch
OECD, 2022, France, 4m
Aziza Akhmouch describes the role of African mayors in ensuring water security and how film can raise the voices of underrepresented voices in climate change. Akhmouch the Head of the Cities, Urban Policies and Sustainable Development division of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), and manages the OECD Roundtable of Mayors and Ministers.
Saturday, May 14 at 1:30pm (Q&A with Linda Lilienfeld, members of CUAHSI and Alain Gomis)

Through the New York Lens – Shorts Program
Intimate stories told through the lenses of filmmakers living in New York.

The Couple Next Door
Abbesi Akhamie, 2020, USA, 11m
A single woman’s feelings of loneliness begin to stir when an eccentric African couple moves in next door to her.

‎Masquerade / Egúngún
Olive Nwosu, 2021, Nigeria/UK, 14m
English and Yoruba with English subtitles
Salewa must return home for her mother’s funeral, to Lagos, a place where she once had to hide herself. At the funeral, she runs into an important person from her past, and is forced to go in search of her own peace. Egúngún (Masquerade) is a meditation on home, memory, and identity—on the many versions of ourselves that haunt us.

Frieda
Tisa Chigaga, 2022, USA, 8m
World Premiere
English and Bemba with English subtitlesAn older undocumented migrant is summarily dismissed from her housekeeping position. Cast into desperate uncertainty, she roams the city in despair. 

Afro AlgorithmsAnatola Araba, 2022, USA, 14mThis 3D-animated short film in the Afrofuturist genre explores topics of AI and bias. In a distant future, an artificial-intelligence entity named Aero is inaugurated as the world’s first AI leader. However, she soon finds that important worldviews are missing from her database, including the stories of the historically marginalized and oppressed. A slate of well-known Black performers lend their voices to the film, including Robin Quivers, Ava Raiin, and Hoji Fortuna.

A Lisbon Affair
Hoji Fortuna, 2021, Portugal/Croatia, 14m
World Premiere
Portuguese with English subtitles
Waldo and Shey are in love. Waldo, who lives in Berlin, travels to Lisbon to meet Shey. Their encounter will test the emotional strength of their bond and expose uncertainties about their Afro-Portuguese cultural and historical identities.

What is Mine Cannot Be Lost / Nkemefuna
Kaelo Iyizoba, 2021, USA, 15m
New York PremiereNkemefuna follows Nkem and Ike, a pair of Nigerian-American siblings still dealing with the death of their father, who perished in the Twin Towers. Nkem left home after his death; upon her return years later, her presence precipitates unresolved issues with her brother, leading to a public confrontation. As the siblings struggle to work through their issues, a looming threat crystallizes.

Menes De Griot: Baba Mpho Shanto, Keeper of the Kulture
AnAkA, 2022, USA, 12m
World Premiere
This short film is the beginning of a larger project documenting Baba Mpho Shanto, AKA Menes De Griot. A culture keeper of our time, Baba Mpho is actively preserving African traditions in the global community. Having grown up a member of the Komfa Spiritual Church in Guayana, Menes De Griot is continuing the works of his lineage by performing ceremonies for marriages, elders, births, and more. A phenomenal drummer, Kwe Kwe (pre-nuptial ritual) specialist, herbalist, and natural lifestyle consultant, Baba Mpho was initiated into the Ifa tradition by Chief Solagbade Popoola in Trinidad and Tobago. He has been playing drums for almost 60 years (professionally for more than 45 years), and he continues to perform ceremonies in Brooklyn and elsewhere. He is truly a force to be reckoned with.
Friday, May 13th at 8:30pm (Q&A with Olive Nwosu, Tisa Chigaga, Kaelo Iyizoba, Anatola Araba, Ellie Foumbi and Baboucarr Camara)

Mzansi Shorts
Reflections on history, memory, and personal narratives in South Africa.

A Dream Deciphered / Ukuhlolwa Kwephupha
Hlumela Matika, 2022, South Africa, 6m
U.S. Premiere
A woman asleep begins to dream. It is a dream that distorts her perception of time and space in relation to her mundane daily tasks—an illusion that evokes a surreal experience of the self.

The Ant / Mier
Oliver North, 2021, South Africa, 26m
U.S. Premiere
English and Afrikaans with English subtitles
Oliver North’s Mier covers two days in the lives of Oupa, a San hunter/gatherer who lives in the desert, and Boetie, a ‘colored’ boy from a nearby settlement to which his people were relocated. Boetie is struggling with his own inner demons when he meets the older man, who shares his traditional values with the stubborn and proud youngster. Over the course of the story, we find out that they are hunting on this land illegally and that they have more in common than either would suspect.

Mother of Moeketsi / Mma Moeketsi
Reabetswe Moeti, 2018, South Africa, 25m
New York Premiere
Sotho with English subtitles
Based on true events, this film recounts a 2012 massacre in which a group of South African mine workers went on a wage-increase strike, leading to a national tragedy in which 34 miners were brutally killed by the police.

Intelligent / Botlhale
Reabetswe Moeti, 2022, South Africa, 35m
U.S. Premiere
Botlhale, who’s mentally ill, makes new friends and finds love when he’s institutionalized. The comrades plan an escape to Chicken Heart, a fast-food joint, where they’ll live out their fantasies of being high-society people. But their outing collides with the shutting down of their home, forcing the friends to confront tragedy and death head-on.
Saturday, May 14 at 6:00pm (Q&A with Hlumela Matika, Reabetswe Moeti, and Oliver North)

Freedom Songs – Shorts Program
A program of shorts evoking the sounds of liberation, self-expression, and love.

Trapped
Athi Petela, 2021, South Africa, 24m
English, isiZulu, and isiXhosa with English subtitles
Ayanda’s double life comes crashing down around her when a surprise visit from her mom upsets the carefully built closet she hides in. Torn between traditional family expectations and career aspirations, Ayanda tears her relationship apart. But somewhere in the heart of it all, acceptance is found.

Two or More
Ifeyinwa Arinze, 2021, USA, 9m
Wrestling with the loss of her mother, a young girl questions her faith when she is asked to pray for her grandmother’s healing.

A Birthday Party
Victoria Adeola Thomas, 2021, UK, 12m
The close relationship between twin sisters is shattered irrevocably when one insists on upholding tradition through the circumcision of her daughter.

The K-Z
Enricka MH, 2019, France, 14m
French with English subtitles
“The K-Z” is the slang term for a leisure activity that the young boxer Moussa views with suspicion. But a friend advises him to give it a try in order to attract the attention of the beautiful Sanaa.

Born Again
Candice Onyeama, 2020, UK, 11m
English and Igbo with English subtitles
A magical-realist film set in London, Born Again follows Nwa, a British-Nigerian woman tormented by her inability to have children. However, a transformative baptism leads her on a journey of healing and rebirth.
Virtual – May 13 – 17, 2022

Master Class with Haile Gerima
A master class led by renowned Ethiopian filmmaker, Haile Gerima, will take place on Saturday, May 14 at 11:30am in the Elinor Bunin Munroe Amphitheater. The class, titled “Cinema of Liberation: From Inception and Execution to Exhibition,” will center on the content, form, and aesthetics of liberation cinema, empowering one’s particular narrative logic and the construction of audiences for partnership in liberation.
Saturday, May, 14 at 11:30am

But Walker’s essay, published in 1991, can also be read as a challenge to two important intellectual and political trends of the times: the growing academic backlash against the popular movements of Afrocentrism in the United States, and the then emerging trend in African Diaspora theorization informed by critiques of Afrocentrism and by a new attention to Cultural Studies, and to Black British Cultural Studies in particular, within Black Studies in the United States.

“I am an Afrocentric.” These words still give me pause—and, dare I say, make me almost uncomfortable—even though I agree and share solidarity with them. “I am an Afrocentric” is a rare affirmation these days. In the mid-1990s, it was a sentence that could not be said without drawing looks of disapproval and words of admonition from colleagues and instructors—at least where I was, a student in a program dedicated to the anthropological study of the African Diaspora.

Walker was the Director of UT Austin’s Center for African and African American Studies (CAAAS) and the Annabel Irion Worsham Centennial Professor in the College of Liberal Arts and Professor of Anthropology when I arrived in Austin, in the fall of 1996, to begin the African Diaspora Program in Anthropology. She was one of the first Black anthropologists that I had ever met. With a teaching assistantship funded by CAAAS, I was assigned office space in the Center. Being located in the Center meant that I had two different experiences of African Diaspora studies.

Our graduate seminars in the African Diaspora program were unequivocally informed by the scholarship emerging out of the United Kingdom and reflected what I often jokingly referred to as the “British Cultural Studies incursion in African Diaspora scholarship.” In our core seminar on African Diaspora theory, Paul Gilroy’s The Black Atlantic (1993) seemed to be our unofficial bible, supplemented by the scholarship of figures including Stuart Hall (1993a) and Kobena Mercer (1994). Our discussions on the Black Diaspora centered primarily on processes of identity formation and, at least from my vantage point, a clear celebration of (racial?) hybridity, as distinct from earlier models of the “syncretism” of diaspora culture. Part of the effort, of course, was to challenge the seeming stagnant view of cultural transformation in prominent discussions of Black culture and identity.

I learned about Afrocentrism as an intellectual movement by way of this intensive critique. Along with Black cultural nationalism, Afrocentrism was practically synonymous with the scholarship of the popular intellectual, Molefi Kete Asante. Asante was constantly castigated for his claims to an African cultural unity and for what was seen as a backward, retrograde “essentialism.”² Moreover, some Afrocentric scholarship was rightly criticized for perpetuating patriarchy and homophobia (Ransby 2000).³

But, as a graduate student, I was concerned that the critical disavowal of the totality of Afrocentrism by this new African Diaspora theorization simultaneously exhibited ambivalence about—if not dismissal of—“Africa” as a key part of the “Black Atlantic.” There was a lack of engagement with Africa as a real geopolitical space inhabited by actual living people racialized as Black. And the pressure to not be labeled “essentialist” for having interests in African continental affairs, for pointing out the specificity of racial Blackness (race, for me, could never be a “floating signifier” [Hall 1993b]) was most frustrating to a student like myself—a Haitian American Black woman interested in Africa and advocating the politics of Pan-Africanism.

Throughout my graduate studies, I would often point out the irony of having Africa marginalized in discussions of Black Diaspora identity formation. My personal experiences and academic research provided another narrative—that the academic formulation of the dichotomy of homeland and diaspora was starkly linear, grossly ahistorical, and analytically insufficient; that Africa was a modern and active space with the joint legacy of slavery and racial colonialism linking the experiences of those on the continent with those in diaspora; that we needed to appreciate the coevality of global Black experiences. I also often wondered why some critics seemed less forgiving of Afrocentrism’s shortcomings than they were of the structures of white supremacy. Nevertheless, the new trend of diaspora theorization in the early 1990s had a lasting impact on the field, spawning a mode of inquiry in diaspora studies focused primarily on routes instead of roots, as well as Black intra-community differences, misidentifications, antagonisms, and hegemonies. In the process, it also enabled the sedimentation of African alterity and the location of modern Blackness solely in the New World.

Outside these graduate seminar discussions, I experienced another African Diaspora. This was during my time at the Center for African and African American Studies, with Walker as Director. There, Africa and diaspora did not feel so rigidly disarticulated. Indeed, the essay “The Virtues of Positive Ethnocentrism” perfectly captures what I remember about Professor Walker’s approach to the African Diaspora: Africa was alive. The dynamic cultural impact of Africa’s presence among populations of African descent was unassailable—and unapologetic. While I did not have the opportunity to enroll in a graduate seminar with Professor Walker, I do remember that the cultural and intellectual programming at CAAAS centered on the ongoing relationship of Africa to its diaspora. For example, in the spring of 1996, right before I moved to Austin, CAAAS hosted “The African Diaspora and the Modern World,” commemorating the United Nations International Year for Tolerance. The conference proceedings were published five years later in a hefty volume, African Roots/American Cultures: Africa in the Creation of the Americas (Walker 2001), which was as creative as it was expansive, with collaborations from scholars and artists from Africa and across the African Diaspora.⁴

This interpretation of the African Diaspora would be overshadowed—at least in prominent circles in the United States—by the excessive attention given to the viewpoint informed by Black British Cultural Studies. Indeed, Walker’s consistent celebration of the “African presence in the Americas” not only affirmed the ongoing work of African and Black Diaspora scholars and cultural practitioners (Harris 1993; Okpewho, Davies, and Mazrui 2001; Palmer 2001) but also carried forward both the Afrocentric legacies and vindicationist scholarship (Foster 1997) of the likes of Edward Blyden (1887); Carter G. Woodson (1910); W.E.B. Du Bois (2001), who actually coined the term “Afrocentric” in his proposed Encyclopedia Africana;⁵ Amy Jacques Garvey (1978); Shirley Graham DuBois (1970); Margaret Busby (1992); and others.

Reading Professor Walker’s affirmation of Afrocentrism today returns me to the bright-eyed wonder I felt witnessing the “ties that bind” (Magubane 1987) Africa to the African Diaspora and the experiences and legacies that helped forge my own interest in African Diaspora Studies. It also reminds me of how important popular Afrocentrism was for generations of young Black people in the 1980s and 1990s grappling with anti- Blackness and the horrid and ongoing legacies of global white supremacy. Many of us surely remember our college days where we heard about, and sometimes read the works of, Chancellor Williams, Chiekh Anta Diop, John Henrick Clarke, and Dr. Ben-Jochannan; I remember university and community study groups on Pan-Africanism, the celebrations and controversies around the reclamation of Egypt as an African civilization, and the increasing proliferation of Afrocentrism in popular culture, in churches, in schools, and in Black community cultural events. As a graduate student based at CAAAS, I also remember our excitement around Yurugu: An African-Centered Critique of European Cultural Thought and Behavior (1994) by anthropologist Marimba Ani (though that book was not taught in our African Diaspora theory seminar).⁶

In today’s political context, in the midst of a global movement for affirming Black lives, I am chagrined that I spent so much time and intellectual energy engaging and challenging that set of scholarship on the African Diaspora that, however inadvertently, contributed not only to the marginalization of Black populations of the African continent but also curtailed consistent investigations into the mutuality of African and diasporic sociohistorical and political experience. Importantly, Professor Walker does not engage with the strand of African Diaspora studies that eschewed the scholarship and politics of Afrocentrism. Instead, as we continually struggle against global anti-Blackness, Sheila Walker provides a clear definition of what it is to be human—that is, what it is, from one’s heritage and location, to be Black in the world.

Walker’s call to center Africa and her recognition of the deep imbrications of African and Diaspora experiences remain to be heeded. And the lost promise of Afrocentrism awaits its recovery.

NOTES

1. Leith Mulling provides a broad definition of Afrocentrism as “a range of loosely integrated beliefs, practices, values, orientations, and behaviors. For some it merely signals a sense of continuity with Africa and loyalty to a community of African descent. For others Afrocentricity may be manifested in modes of dress, ritual practices, or other cultural activities. For still others Afrocentricity refers to recent attempts to systematize these orientations into a philosophical system of beliefs and practices.” Mullings also provides a great critique of the problematic deployment of the culture concept in some Afrocentric scholarship (2000, 210). Paul Gilroy defines “ethnic absolutism” as “a reductive, essentialist understanding of ethnic and national difference which operates through an absolute sense of culture so powerful that it is capable of separating people off from each other and diverting them into social and historical locations that are understood to be mutually impermeable and incommensurable.” Gilroy goes on to say that “ethnic absolutism” afflicts everyone and that “those who experience racism themselves may be particularly prone to its lure. They often seize its simple, self-evident truths as a way of rationalizing their subordination and comprehending their own particularity.” It is for this reason, he maintains, that scholars must argue against “the narrow practice of cultural nationalism whatever their source” (1990, 114).

2. As I would quickly learn, criticism of this variant of Afrocentrism (what I would later call “Asanteism”) and the theory of Afrocentricity (Asante 1988) was abundant and often extended beyond internal Black studies debates. By the late 1980s, white historians were forced to contend with scholarship loosely identified as Afrocentric. This was especially the case with the publication of Martin Bernal’s first volume of Black Athena: The Afroasiatic Roots of Classical Civilization, published in 1987. The backlash from white scholars was swift. But Bernal’s work actually followed that of influential Senegalese historian Chiekh Anta Diop (1974).

3. Though he has since changed positions (see “Asante interview,” the Blackstripe website, accessed July 11, 2020, http://www.qrd.org/qrd/www/culture/black/articles/asante.html), Asante himself claimed in Afrocentricity (1988) that homosexuality was not part of the African way of life; another popular figure, Frances Cress Welsing later argued that homosexuality was a byproduct of white supremacy (1991). Meanwhile, the “Africa” that some Afrocentrics evoked was often the product of a US imagination. See also Sweet, James. 2005. “Afrocentrism.” In Encyclopedia of African-American Culture and History. Encyclopedia.com. Accessed May 10, 2020. https://www.encyclopedia.com/history/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcriptsand-maps/afrocentrism.

4. Some of the contributors included the prolific Pan-African historian Joseph E. Harris, anthropologist Michael Blakey, former Director of the Schomburg Howard Dodson, economic historian Joseph Inikori, anthropologist and curator at the Smithsonian Museum’s Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage Diana N’Diaye, Afro-Cuban filmmaker and screenwriter Gloria Rolando, AfroBrazilian historian João Jose Reis, among many others.

5. See Sweet (2005) in note 3.

6. What is regrettable is that prominent contemporary scholars of Afrocentrism did not develop an internal critique of the homophobia and sexism that stained some of its theorization while making it inhospitable to Black Queer scholarship.

REFERENCES CITED

Ani, Marimba. 1994. Yurugu: An African-Centered Critique of European Cultural Thought and Behavior. Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press.

Asante, Molefi K. 1988. Afrocentricity. Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press.

Bernal, Martin. 1987–1991. Black Athena: The Afroasiatic Roots of Classical Civilization, 2 vols. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.

Blyden, Edward W. 1887. Christianity, Islam and the Negro Race. London: W.B. Whittingham & Co.

Busby, Margaret. 1992. Daughters of Africa. New York: Pantheon.

Diop, Cheikh Anta. 1974. The African Origin of Civilization: Myth or Reality. Translated by Mercer Cook. New York: Lawrence Hill.

DuBois, Shirley Graham. 1970. “Egypt Is Africa.” The Black Scholar 1(7): 20–27.

Dubois, W.E.B. 2001 [1915]. The Negro. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

Foster, Kevin M. 1997. “Vindicationist Politics: A Foundation and Point of Departure for an African Diaspora Studies Paradigm.” Transforming Anthropology 6(1&2): 2–9.

Garvey, Amy J. 1978. Garvey and Garveyism. London: Octagon Press Ltd.

Gilroy, Paul. 1990. “Nationalism, History, and Ethnic Absolutism.” History Workshop 30(Autumn): 114–20.

Gilroy, Paul. 1993. The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Hall, Stuart. 1993a. “Cultural Identity and Diaspora.” In Colonial Discourse & Postcolonial Theory: A Reader, edited by Patrick Williams and Laura Chrisman, 392–403. London: Longman.

Hall, Stuart. 1993b. “What is this ‘Black’ in Black Popular Culture?” Social Justice 20(1/2): 104–14.

Harris, Joseph, ed. 1993. Global Dimensions of the African Diaspora. Washington, DC: Howard University Press.

Magubane, Bernard M. 1987. The Ties That Bind: African-American Consciousness of Africa. Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press.

Mercer, Kobina. 1994. Welcome to the Jungle: New Positions in Black Cultural Studies. New York: Routledge.

Mullings, Leith. 2000. “Reclaiming Culture: The Dialectics of Identity.” In Dispatches from the Ebony Tower: Intellectuals Confront the African American Experience, edited by Manning Marable, 210–15. New York: Columbia University Press.

Okpewho, Isidore, Carole Boyce Davies, and Ali A. Mazrui, eds. 2001. The African Diaspora: African Origins and New World Identities. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Palmer, Colin. 2001. “The African Diaspora.” The Black Scholar 30 (3–4): 56–59.

Ransby, Barbara. 2000. “Afrocentrism, Cultural Nationalism, and the Problem with Essentialist Definitions of Race, Gender, and Sexuality.” In Dispatches from the Ebony Tower: Intellectuals Confront the African American Experience, edited by Manning Marable, 216–23. New York: Columbia University Press.

Walker, Sheila S. 1991. “The Virtues of Positive Ethnocentrism: Some Reflections of an African Anthropologist.” Transforming Anthropology 2(2): 23–26.

Walker, Sheila S. 2001. African Roots/American Cultures: Africa in the Creation of the Americas. New York: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.

Welsing, Frances Cress. 1991. The Isis Papers: The Keys to the Colors. Chicago: Third World Press.

Woodson, Carter G. 1936 [1910]. An African Background Outlined: Or, Handbook for the Study of the Negro. Washington, DC: The Association for the Study of Negro Life and History.

It’s Jawnteenth 2020, and a few hundred community members have taken over Fifty-second Street, the commercial corridor and cultural lifeblood of West Philadelphia, with marching and chanting.² For three weeks straight, our city has rebelled against state violence against Black people and advanced the local struggle to defund the police. Days earlier, Fifty-second Street was occupied by armored tanks and riot police, who assaulted residents with tear gas, rubber bullets, and other chemical weapons. But, on this holiday commemorating Black freedom, we break from shouting promises of “No Justice, No Peace.” We hold space for the joy and love in liberation, as our parade winds through the streets with a drill team of percussionists and the Concrete Cowboys equestrians. Neighbors honk to the cadence of our voices from cars and gather on stoops to dance, chant, or raise a fist with us. Our repeated chants are affirmations of care to one another: We love being Black.

“I am ethnocentric. And I have absolutely no intention of ridding myself of my ethnocentrism because I like it.” (Walker 1991, 23)

This declaration—to unapologetically love one’s community and one’s self—is the “life-affirming position” that anchors Sheila Walker’s “The Virtues of Positive Ethnocentrism: Some Reflections of an Afrocentric Anthropologist.” The short essay begins with Walker recounting a university seminar organized around the theme of “Ending Ethnocentrism,” during which her white colleagues conflate Eurocentrism’s “long and consistent history of oppressing others” with Walker’s defense of the “positive ethnocentrism” of Black folks, who choose to center our kinfolk in our lives and labors. As Walker makes plain, professional encounters of this sort are more injurious than colleagues being “honestly unable to comprehend” the distinction between white supremacy and identifying with and having love for one’s people. Re-centering whiteness in the process of redressing its innumerable violences disregards the “beingness” of non-white people: “It essentially denies who I am, and even denies me the right to define who I am” (Walker 1991, 23).

As higher education undergoes its latest reckoning with (its own) white supremacy, Walker’s reflections still read as provocatively as they did thirty years ago. In this moment, national uprisings persist in their demands for police abolition. A growing number of campus abolitionist formations are interrogating universities’ ongoing harms against Black, Brown, Indigenous, and poor communities through policing, prison investment, gentrification, and labor exploitation. And yet, the responses of campus leaders to these demands for justice have been overwhelmingly “toothless” solidarity statements,³ virtual townhalls, anti-racist booklists, and high-level diversity and inclusion appointments. These measures make a teachable moment out of struggles for radical transformation of the material conditions of Black suffering. They are the neoliberal manifestations of Walker’s principled critique of those individuals and institutions who do “not want to see themselves as implicated” in white supremacy also being the ones who are able to conspicuously position themselves as “working to end” the oppressive structures “of which they are beneficiaries both materially and psychologically” (Walker 1991, 24–25).

Walker’s essay and the fiercely self-possessed example of her intellectual journey urges us to consider what is life-affirming—or not—about the circumstances, praxis, and imagination of Black Anthropology in a time of global Black rebellion.⁴ In her 1978 essay that introduces a special issue on Black Education, “A Challenge to Anthropology and Education,” Walker uplifts the contributions of a multigenerational group of Black scholars, who do not all define themselves as anthropologists but make use of anthropological tools, guided by the “faith” that anthropology has “relevance to the liberation of Black people from the devastating consequences of over four centuries of white racism” (Drake, quoted in Walker 1978, 76). As an anthropologist and organizer who was both radicalized and professionalized in the wake of spectacular Black deaths and the ongoing Movement for Black Lives, what I find most generative in this essay is Walker’s insistence that “there is fertile ground for anthropologists to plow that really needs plowing” (Walker 1978, 83). I understand this statement to be an invitation to re-center the goals of Black liberation in Black scholarship, to interrogate the question of what it is that anthropology can materially do for Black people (if anything), and, returning to “The Virtues of Positive Ethnocentrism,” to audaciously love our folks out loud.

In two months of quarantine and another two months in the streets, the most hopeful I have felt about the prospects of Black freedom was in those jubilant moments shouting “I love being Black.” Black people are dying, slowly and quickly. We are also always struggling, surviving, loving, and creating the new worlds we envision. As Walker’s scholarship continues to teach us, to be positively ethnocentric, to be one who “gratefully and ecstatically participates in [the] many manifestations of that cultural orientation,” is and must be joyful self-determining kin-work (Walker 1991, 24). To imagine oneself as contributing to the liberatory struggles of one’s people is and must be an act of pleasure. To like it, to love it, to be pleased by it, is enough.

Notes

1. The chant “I Love Being Black” is a popular call-and-response in Movement for Black Lives/Black Lives Matter protests, which is attributed to the Black Youth Project 100. A studio version is featured on BYP 100’s “The Black Joy Experience.” Black Youth Project 100 Choir. 2018. “I Love Being Black (Chant).” YouTube. October 18. Accessed July 26, 2020. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZuxqmtaZ2G4&list=OLAK5uy_lezl9a_sSVUNmuQO4WUSEkGIHRkHoil3E&index=4

2. “Jawnteenth” was an event held at Malcolm X Park in Philadelphia on June 19, 2020, by Black Lives Matter Philly, where I am a core organizer. The name is a portmanteau of Juneteenth and the beloved, all-purpose Philly term, “jawn.”

3. Englad, Jason, and Richard Purcell. 2020. “Higher Ed’s Toothless Response to the Killing of George Floyd.” Chronicle of Higher Education website, June 8. Accessed July 26, 2020. https://www.chronicle.com/article/higher-eds-toothlessresponse-to-the-killing-of-george-floyd.

4. Sheila Walker’s 2015 article, “Milestones and Arrows: A Cultural Anthropologist Discovers the Global African Diaspora,” is a generous self-retrospective on a professional life well lived.

REFERENCES CITED

Walker, Sheila S. 1978. “A Challenge to Anthropology and Education.” Anthropology & Education Quarterly 9(2): 75–84.

Walker, Sheila S. 1991. “The Virtues of Positive Ethnocentrism: Some Reflections of an Afrocentric Anthropologist.” Transforming Anthropology 2(2): 23–26.

Walker, Sheila S. 2015. “Milestones and Arrows: A Cultural Anthropologist Discovers the Global African Diaspora.” Journal of African American Studies 100(3): 494–521.

Originally appeared in
Transforming Anthropology 2.2 (1991)

The editorial board of Transforming Anthropology, the Journal of the Association of Black Anthropologists, selected this article, which I have edited slightly, from an earlier issue to feature, along with commentaries by Dr. Jemima Pierre³ and Dr. Krystal Strong⁴, to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the association of which I was among the founders. I was stunned that after three decades my article remains so staggeringly relevant. 

I participated in a seminar for college professors on the theme “Ending Ethnocentrism” because of my assumption that working to put an end to ethnocentrism was an obligation for scholars of color. This ethnocentrism that needs to be ended refers specifically to the Eurocentrism of people of European and Euro-American origin that has arrogantly taken as its privilege the right to define and judge the majority of the people of the world—who are people of color—according to Eurocentric norms and criteria, and to conclude that most of the world’s people are inferior to the minority that they themselves constitute.

As the other people in the seminar—almost all Euro-Americans, hence the carriers of the cultural tradition we were talking about eliminating, and by their presence presumably people of good will—spoke of the necessity of putting an end to ethnocentrism, I increasingly felt that there was something fundamentally wrong with the nature of their discourse. When I, one of the few African Americans present, spoke up, most of my colleagues were surprised that what I said contrasted starkly with what they, from their liberal stance, had been affirming.

“I am ethnocentric and I have absolutely no intention of ridding myself of my ethnocentrism—because I like it,” I said in that gathering that was supposedly intent upon eradicating something like what I chose to affirm.

The issue is that what I chose to affirm was only something like the ethnocentrism that they, and I, agreed needed to be eradicated. But it was not the same thing. As an African American, what I was saying in affirming my ethnocentrism, my Afrocentrism, was simply that I acknowledged my beingness as an African American, and that I expected others to do so also. I take anyone’s failure to do so as an attempt to deny my person, my heritage, my culture. 

I do not want people to tell me that when they see me they see just a person and not a representative of an ethnic group. First, I don’t believe they are telling the truth, whether they wish to delude themselves into thinking they are or not. And second, I do not want my fellow citizens to tell me I am just like them, because I am not. I am very aware of that fact and assume that they are too, although they undoubtedly are not as aware as I am of the extent of the differences. Nor do they know enough about my culture to know of what these differences consist.

Whereas I share in generalized U.S. culture, the version of it that is most intimately mine, in a society in which people of African and European ancestry have had radically different historical and present experiences, is specifically African American. I, like many college educated African Americans, can code switch between the two cultural orientations as the situation requires. For someone who is a product only of the other culture, and not of mine, to tell me I am just like him or her, shows a lack of awareness that my cultural code switching only shares with them one facet of my larger behavioral repertoire. It also denies my very real cultural specificity. It denies who I am, and denies me the right to define who I am.

In the seminar, I was simply saying that I identify with my own people, meaning people of African descent, and with our culture, which seems like a pretty natural and healthy state of affairs. I also find these people and this culture sufficiently fascinating to make them and it the center of my research career as a professional anthropologist. 

I do not define narrowly the spectrum of my ethnocentrism, of the people I include in my concept of “my people.” On the contrary, I see my self-definition as one of concentric circles. The inner circle is composed of African Americans by which I mean all people of African descent in the Americas, with African Americans in the United States, logically, as the nucleus. 

This definition of African Americans is admittedly uncommon in the United States, where most people of African descent have been inculcated with an impoverishing preoccupation with national boundaries. Many of us identify exclusively with the limited and limiting boundaries of the United States, rather than also with members of the more expansive group of people of African descent in North, Central, and South America and the Caribbean.

In the closest circle in my definition there are those African Americans who are my family. And then there are those who constitute my social community, from most intimate to the broadest. That community includes not only people of African descent in the United States, because my cultural identity does not end at the nation’s boundaries. It is expansive enough to include those other people of African descent to the north and south of the country whose passport I carry in my travels elsewhere. I have many obvious and less obvious cultural characteristics in common with other people of African origin throughout the Americas, often more than with my Euro-American compatriots.

The next circle is peoples of Africa, because my status in the country in which I live, and in the world in which people categorize and judge me by what they see, is based exclusively on my African ancestry, irrespective of any other admixtures from elsewhere. Whereas the latter might make me more or less acceptable in some circles, or might make me more or less aesthetically pleasing to some, these are nuances. The striking feature about me and other people of African ancestry in the world’s definition of us all is just that—the visible evidence of our African ancestry, not the extent to which evidence of that African ancestry may have been modified by other genetic presences.

This definition is irrespective of national official or social definitions of “race”—such as the differences between Brazil and the United States. These are good polar examples in the Americas because of the historic Brazilian denial of the significance of race, as evidenced by their non-binary classification, in direct contrast to what has been the simple black and white world of the United States. In Brazil—let us not delude ourselves into taking myths for reality—although people are classified into a range of phenotypes from black to white, black tends to correspond to poor and oppressed, and rich to white and privileged.

In both countries, irrespective of the social meanings of the subtleties of phenotype, the real issue is how to define and treat the issue of African ancestry. In both societies ruled by a power elite of European origin, this is a fundamental structural issue. In both countries there is an unmistakable link between African origin and systematic and systemic deprivation of access to the benefits of the society. The problem in both is institutional racism. It is overt and avowed in the United States, hence an issue that can be addressed and redressed.

It is more subtle, and has been adamantly denied in Brazil, except by members of black consciousness movements—and hence harder to identify, attack, and correct on the variety of levels necessary. It is important to interject a 2021 reflection here. Since the 1991 article, and especially during the Lula presidency 2003-2011, the consciousness and social participation of Afro-Brazilians has evolved enormously thanks to the activities of the Black Movement.

. . . Which takes us back to my seminar. Almost no one there was willing to even engage my argument, although I stated clearly that it was based on my notion that ethnocentrism need not be tantamount to racism, and that racism is the real problem. On the contrary, I said, my overt and conscious ethnocentric appreciation of my own people provides the basis for my appreciation of other people. Because I am interested in my own both more restricted and broadest culture and its myriad manifestations, I am also interested in the cultures of others. It is because I appreciate and am interested in my African American culture in the United States, that I can appreciate the other cultures of African origin in the hemisphere for both our similarities and our differences. And it is because I appreciate my own larger culture, and the sense of both identity and identification it gives me, that I can appreciate, say, Japanese or Swedish culture for their differences from my own, maybe even integrating elements of both, and of others, into my life.

My white colleagues were, I think, honestly unable to comprehend the fundamental distinction I was making between ethnocentrism and racism. Because for them, the two concepts are coterminous, are inevitably and inextricably linked in their own personal and culturally determined experiences and worldviews. For me, however, as I was using them and as I live them, the first term, ethnocentrism, in no way inexorably implies the second, racism. For my colleagues, however, to appreciate their own culture means to be Eurocentric. And a major manifestation of Eurocentrism has been a long and consistent history of oppressing others in ways ranging from genocide to the subtleties, or lack of subtleties such as flagrant violence, of institutional racism.

So for these people to admit to appreciating and affirming their own ethnic culture, given the oppressive nature of Eurocentrism, by definition involved being racist. Because they did not want to see themselves as implicated in the racism that is part of the definition of their form of ethnocentrism, they denied the validity of the concept of ethnocentrism for everyone, including for me—in a striking manifestation of Eurocentric arrogance. 

Because their form of ethnocentrism was in their minds negative—or at least they were saying it was—they were unable to see mine in any other light, in spite of the fundamental and glaring differences between the two. The issue was not a problem of ethnocentrism. Members of all human groups are naturally, and usually innocently, ethnocentric in the sense of seeing the world from the perspective of their own ethnic group. The real issue is the problem of Eurocentric racism.

I am Afrocentric. It would be ridiculous for me, a person of African descent who is defined by and who defines myself by that heritage, and who gratefully and ecstatically participates in many manifestations of that cultural orientation, to imagine that I could or should be anything other than Afrocentric. I have to look at the world through some eyes, from some perspective. The one that is most inherently mine is certainly the most logical one for me to claim—as well as being inescapable. I view the world from the perspective not only of who I am, but also of who the world sees me as being.

The same is equally true of my white colleagues who denied the truth of this fundamental reality. But they, unlike me, were unable to acknowledge appreciating their own cultural orientation without simultaneously admitting its role in exploiting and oppressing people of color in the United States and around the world. That is a part of the Eurocentric worldview of which they are inescapably, and apparently uncritically, a part, and of which they are beneficiaries, both materially and psychologically. There is a logical dilemma and contradiction in their talking about working to end something from which they so clearly benefit.

Their ethnocentric position is, by the definition resulting from an accumulation of historical and contemporary acts, racist. Mine, on the country, is anti-racist. I understand that human groups, although basically the same, are culturally different in a variety of ways. That is what I like about them, and what inspires me to try to enrich my life by learning about others with whom I share the planet.

I would like to think that one day my colleagues, and others like them, might be able to progress beyond their narrow monocultural horizons to realize that understanding and appreciating oneself and one’s culture is the first step to understanding and appreciating those of others. Their refusal to even consider the potential validity of my perspective does not bode well for my hopes that many of them might so enrich themselves. They just may find it preferable to continue receiving the benefits of their Eurocentricity.

Maybe my colleagues, in their heart of hearts, really agree with (but certainly would not admit to doing so) the wonderfully satirical bumper sticker that says “Join the army. Travel to distant places. Meet fascinating and exotic peoples. And kill them.” This clever reworking of a slogan encouraging Americans to join the army reflects the extreme version of my colleagues’ worldview, an outer limit of a manifestation of their Eurocentrism. Given this radical difference in their perspective and mine, I can understand why most of them were unable to understand my affirmation of my ethnocentrism, of my non-racist, my profoundly anti-racist, Afrocentric ethnocentrism.

What is needed is to progress from a position in which ethnocentrism, the awareness of ethnic and cultural differences and the conscious appreciation of one’s own ethnic characteristics, is also, in fact, racist. This is a twofold and complementary process. First of all, the basic fact needs to be acknowledged that no culture is inherently superior to any other. There are some groups that have acquired the military force and economic control to impose their culture on others, and by this fact have claimed a position allowing them to define what “real” culture is supposed to be.

They have determined, for example, the languages and dialects thereof, and the family structures that are considered normal and “normative.” And they have defined aesthetic standards ranging from preferred human types, to appropriate clothing styles for different occasions, to what forms of music and art are considered “classical.” The fact of their imposition of such definitions does not in any way imply that these “standard,” even allegedly “universal” values are of any inherent superiority. And they are by no means universal.

It only means that they represent the values of the ethnic culture that acquired a monopoly of control ultimately manifest in the threat and reality of destruction both culturally and physically. That members of this group acknowledge this fact on some level, although generally not openly, is evident in their frequent, although often unacknowledged, both co-optation and efforts at appropriation of elements of dominated cultures. While acting as oppressors, they also seek to imitate elements of the cultures of their victims. Were they to really believe that their own culture was superior, to try to absorb elements of allegedly inferior cultures would be not only unnecessary, and a logical contradiction, but even unthinkable.

Members of ethnic groups that do not have this cultural edge based on non-cultural factors, and who have been victims of this Eurocentric bias, have been taught to evaluate their own cultures negatively, and consequently have often sought to take on in their place the culture of the more powerful groups. These culturally dominated people need to learn to appreciate both the value and the values of their own cultures, while also realistically acknowledging their membership in larger culture systems. And they need to understand the necessity of affirming their own ethnic cultures, both for their own healthy sense of self, which can only be rooted in their own specific heritage, and to further contribute to the world cultural mosaic. What one has to share with others is, ideally, the best of one’s own culture. The world of humans is rich precisely because of the interesting variety of ways of being and doing that constitutes it.

To be ethnocentric in the positive sense is to affirm the importance of this variety for everyone, and to affirm the value of one’s own culture for both oneself and for the enrichment of others with whom one shares it. To be a racist is the contrary of both these life affirming positions. It is to want to reduce human life to its most monotonous, lowest common denominator form of a single culture of those who can impose themselves—by force rather than by either values or creativity. 

To equate my ethnocentrism, my Afrocentrism, with the Eurocentrism of my colleagues therefore obscures the fundamental issue. Whereas their ethnocentrism has promoted oppression, mine is based on asserting the rights of human groups to be and appreciate themselves. Therefore, rather than wishing to put and end to ethnocentrism, I affirm the value of positive ethnocentrism as an antidote to racism, and to the dullness, the literal colorlessness, that those who have the nerve to deny the possibility and validity of my Afrocentricity, have striven to impose.

An Afrocentric awareness of the best of our culture is what African Americans have to continue to contribute to world civilization. That many elements of our culture have been appreciated around the world is clear evidence of the value of our contributions to humanity. We need to keep this reality in mind and realize that it is in the interest of the international human order for African Americans to remain healthily and creatively Afrocentric.

¹https://anthrosource.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/share/IQZPZHG2KBKSRYAWJUFC?target=10.1525/tran.1991.2.2.23

²https://www.transforminganthropology.org/current-issue

³ Jemima Pierre, African Diaspora Studies and the Lost Promise of Afrocentrism, Transforming Anthropology, 10.1111/traa.12190, 28, 2, (126-129), (2020). Wiley Online Library

⁴ Krystal Strong, Love for My People: Some Reflections on Sheila Walker and Life‐Affirming Anthropology, Transforming Anthropology, 10.1111/traa.12197, 28, 2, (125-126), (2020). Wiley Online Library

“Welcome Home” To Africa

I began to learn about the global African Diaspora, the worldwide presence of peoples and cultures of African origin, in Cameroon in Central Africa on my first trip outside the United States when I was nineteen. As a result, Africa and an evolving concept of a global African Diaspora have been an integral part of most of my life. I could not have gone to Africa at a better moment in history or in my life. Nor could I have had a better introduction to the continent than by spending a summer in the vibrant and diverse country that characterizes itself as “Africa in Miniature.” Plus, I was privileged to live with a family that was proud of their rich culture and treated me like a daughter and sister.

In defiance of entrenched stereotypes of Africa, the Bamum people who welcomed me to their capital of Foumban had a royal dynasty dating back centuries, and a rich artistic tradition represented in major international museums. Their legendary King Njoya (whose reign was 1895-1923) had built a three-story palace in the early 1900s which the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) helped to restore in the 1990s. The king had also invented a writing system for the Bamum language in which he had written several books that were used in the schools he created. His most significant work was Histoire et Coutumes des Bamum/History and Customs of the Bamum.²

Alex Haley had not yet written Roots (1976), which inspired many African Americans to become interested in our African heritage and think we could, and should, want to know it. That was more than ten years off. So, I can’t claim to have been seeking an ancestral heritage in Cameroon. What I was seeking were adventures to broaden my adolescent world. I had been anxious to experience other cultures since childhood visits to an aunt living in Manhattan’s Chinatown exposed me to people who looked different and spoke and wrote differently from everyone I knew. They made me think that there was much to see out in the world.

So, when my Cameroonian host family welcomed me “to the source,” I didn’t  understand what they meant.
“You are a black American, aren’t you?” they asked. “Of course.”
The transition from “Negro” to “black” was recent. “Then your ancestors came from Africa, right?”
“I guess so.”
We weren’t yet “Afro-American” and were two decades from becoming “African American.”
“So, welcome to the source. Welcome home.”
By the end of my stay with my Bamum family I really felt at home, and I have returned to Foumban again and again.

My Cameroonian “parents,” with no post-secondary education but an enlightened Pan-Africanist consciousness, also surprised me with their knowledge of African American culture. Their knowledge contrasted starkly with my ignorance about their African culture. They asked about Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Civil Rights Movement, and compared it with African independence movements. It was 1964, the year the Civil Rights Act presumably made African Americans full citizens of the United States. And Cameroon had become formally independent of European colonization in 1960. So, it was a period of great optimism for us on both sides of the Atlantic.

My Cameroonian family asked if I knew Olympic sprinter Wilma Rudolph, whom they affectionately called the Black Gazelle. I did. They also asked if I knew Brazil’s soccer king, Pele. I didn’t. They were as proud of these people from the other side of the Atlantic as we were proud of accomplished African Americans. That was my first inkling that these Africans had a sense of international connections that I did not yet understand. I knew next to nothing about Brazil and had no idea that Afro-Brazilians constituted the majority of Brazil’s population, or that they were second only to Nigeria in population of African origin.³

After asking me if I had brought them records of the African American music they enjoyed (I was too embarrassed to admit that I had not thought they would know our music much less have electricity or record players), they played music by Harry Belafonte, Ray Charles, and Mahalia Jackson. At parties we danced to Caribbean music from Cuba, Trinidad, and Guadeloupe, and to Nigerian and Ghanaian High Life, all of which the Cameroonians characterized as “their music.”

The family was surprised and pleased that I knew how to dance to these varied African Diasporan and African musics. I told them that we danced to Caribbean and Latin music in New Jersey and that I knew the High Life from college parties with African students. But I didn’t yet understand the commonalities between these musics that led my African hosts to characterize them as theirs. I didn’t know that concepts of what constituted music and how to make and move to it had traveled to the Americas in the heads of Africans enslaved by Europeans and Euro-Americans to do the work of building the Americas.⁴

Although brought to be worked to death to develop a new world, and in most places either prohibited from making music and dancing or constrained to do so in ways not of their choosing, Africans and their descendants throughout the Americas nevertheless continued to make music based on African concepts and to dance to survive by maintaining links with divine forces and for essential recreation. These music and dance forms were modified by the encounters in the Americas, yet retained enough of their original identities that when they returned to their continent of origin, Africans still recognized them as theirs.⁵

Probably without even knowing they were doing so, my Cameroonian family was making me aware of the African origins of African American culture and of the existence of a larger web of continuities and connections from Africa to the Americas and among African Diasporan societies. They were laying the foundation of my African Diasporan consciousness, educating me into their international sense of Africanity based on their recognition of links between Africans and Africans in the Diaspora. This was decades before most of us in the United States had begun thinking about ourselves within the concept of “the African Diaspora.”⁶ Some of these connections were evident in the most basic elements of daily life, such as food. Bamum dishes that I initially considered unpleasantly strange ceased to seem strange as I began to not only love them, but to appreciate their similarities to African American foods. White balls of corn meal fufu began to seem like ancestors of our white corn meal grits. The delicious greens we ate most days—njapshe, shem, and others—recalled the greens—collards, kale, mustards, turnips—that I loved at home. Bamum dishes have now augmented and enhanced my concept of “Soul food.”⁷

My Chinatown experiences had inspired me to want to travel and get to know other peoples and cultures in the world. I was majoring in political science to prepare for a diplomatic career—the only people I had encountered whose careers involved international travel being African diplomats. My Cameroonian family changed my career aspirations by inviting a French anthropologist to lunch. Claude Tardits was doing research about the Bamum Kingdom that resulted in the monograph, Le Royaume Bamoum/The Bamum Kingdom.⁸ He talked about his experiences living with and learning from the Bamum and about anthropology’s participant-observer research methodology.

I was immensely enjoying what I later realized was my proto-anthropological experience of learning about Bamum culture by living with Bamum people, observing while participating, and asking lots of questions. So in Foumban, in addition to beginning to learn about my own African heritage and about the global African Diaspora, I also realized that I could make a career of experiencing the world as a cultural anthropologist.

Decades later I was invited to the 2013 “International Colloquium on King Njoya” at Cameroon’s University of Yaoundé. The inevitable theme of my talk and article for Le Roi Njoya: Créateur de Civilisation et Précurseur de la Renaissance Africaine/King Njoya: Creator of Civilization and Precursor of the African Renaissance, was how the society King Njoya had been so significant in molding had led this African American to research the global African Diaspora.⁹

Finding “The Spirit”

My Cameroon experiences led me to do graduate work in cultural anthropology. My master’s thesis at the University of Chicago was about the phenomenon of spiritual trance that had intrigued me since, at age eight, I first saw well-dressed ladies in fancy hats “get happy,” and be “filled with the Spirit,” at a Baptist church in Newark, New Jersey. This was my first vision of the Africanity of African American culture. Of course, I didn’t know that at the time. Nor, I’m quite sure, did others in the church, including the ladies in question. Intrigued by this expres sion of a spiritual experience, I wanted to know more about this “Spirit.” What was its name, where did it come from, and especially why did it act as it did?

For my thesis, published as Ceremonial Spirit Possession in Africa and Afro- America, I read extensively about African derived spiritual systems in Brazil: Candomblé; Cuba: Yoruba/Lucumi/Ocha/Santeria; Suriname: Winti; and Haiti: Vodou.¹⁰ They gave me a context for understanding the behavior reflecting the intimate relationship between the human and the divine that I had observed in the New Jersey church. It was my Cameroon experiences that had made me assume that I could better understand African American behaviors within the comparative context of a larger African Diasporan perspective that included African origins.

I attended my first Candomblé ceremony on my first Brazil trip to Salvador da Bahia in 1976. Gestures of people who “incorporated” and danced for Orishas, the spiritual beings of the West African Yoruba people taken to Brazil, reminded me of the ladies “filled” with the Spirit in the Newark church. The Orishas represent forces of nature and human life. They have personalities, stories, colors, and favorite foods. Their dance gestures reflect their roles in the cosmos. Oshun’s area of nature is fresh water; she represents wealth and femininity, her color is yellow, and she dances looking vainly at herself in a mirror. Maternal Yemanja’s area of nature is the ocean, and she is the protector of fishermen. Her colors are blue and white, and her dances represent the moods of the sea, from calm to turbulent.

Decades later and on the other side of the Atlantic, in Morocco in North Africa in 1998, I saw on the front page of a local newspaper that there would be a Gnawa festival and symposium in the town of Essaouira. A review of a recently published book said that the author compared Gnawa spiritual practices, which included sacred trances, to Brazilian Candomblé, Cuban Yoruba, and Haitian Vodou.¹¹ I obviously had to find my way to Essaouira, and arrived just in time to talk my way into a Gnawa ceremony.

The Gnawa are descendants of Sub-Saharan Africans who were enslaved and brought across the Sahara Desert to Morocco. In a song some Gnawa refer to themselves as Ouled Bambara, children of the Bambara, a major ethnic group in Mali. Ceremonies allow their spiritual beings, the Mlouk, to come into the human community in the entranced bodies of their devotees when summoned by the rhythms of the guenbri, a three-string lute. Mimoun, in black, symbolically opens the ritual door so that other Mlouk can enter. Dressed in blue, Sidi Moussa, patron of sailors, dances with swimming gestures. And yellow-clad Lala Mira, who likes sweets and perfume, dances coquettishly.¹²

I went to a bookstore the next day to purchase the book I had read about and found the author, Abdelhafid Chlyeh, present. When I introduced myself, he said that another Sheila Walker had written a book about the topic. He showed me the bibliography and pointed to the reference—my Ceremonial Spirit Possession.

Abdelhafid invited me to the next symposium where my presentation was about similarities, I could not help noticing between the Gnawa Mlouk and Afro-Brazilian Orishas. Eshu is the Orisha who, like Mimoun, opens the way so that the other Orishas can enter ceremonies, and his colors are black and red. Although their genders are different, the similarity between Sidi Moussa and Yemanja is apparent, as is that between Lala Mira and Oshun. These similarities were especially striking because not only were the African origins different—Bambara from Mali as opposed to Yoruba from Nigeria and Benin—but the contexts were also different—a North African Muslim society as opposed to a South American Christian one. My publication from the symposium was Les divinités africaines dansent aux Amériques et au Maroc/African Divinities Dance in the Americas and in Morocco.¹³

Discovering Diaspora Anthropology

While at the University of Chicago I discovered the writings, based on her field research, of Zora Neale Hurston. Best known for her novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, Hurston’s anthropological works were Mules and Men: Negro Folktales and Voodoo Practices in the South and Tell My Horse: Voodoo and Life in Haiti and Jamaica.¹⁴

I also discovered that dancer Katherine Dunham, internationally known for her pioneering Katherine Dunham Company, had studied anthropology at the University of Chicago decades earlier. She had done field research in Jamaica, Haiti, and Martinique and had used in her performances movements learned in those cultures. The full body undulation characteristic of the Dunham barre is based on the movement of the lwa, Dambala in Haitian Vodou. And L’Agya, the title of one of her well-known dances, recalls the martial art form of that name from Martinique. Her books Journey to Accompong (1946) and Island Possessed (1969) describe her field research experiences in Jamaica and Haiti that allowed her to make African Diasporan sacred and secular traditions into internationally acclaimed art forms.¹⁵ So I had foremothers as role models in the anthropological study of the African Diaspora, both of whom were known for creative expressions inspired by their field research.

I was also pleased to discover Melville Herskovits’s The Myth of the Negro Past, which drew the same conclusions to which my experiences in Cameroon had led me.¹⁶ The myth Herskovits was challenging was that U.S. African Americans, in contrast with African descendants elsewhere in the Americas whose obvious Africanity was undeniable, had retained no significant African culture. His perspective was based on field research in Dahomey, now Benin, in West Africa, as well as in Brazil, Trinidad, Suriname, and Haiti in the Americas. Comparing phenomena between these societies, and with U.S. African Americans, made visible the continuities and commonalities that characterize the Africanity of the latter. My best example was the African American trance behavior that I understood better after attending the Afro-Brazilian ceremony in which the Orishas came from Africa with names and other characteristics, and their danced gestures reflected their roles in the cosmos.

At the University of Chicago, my doctoral field research in 1971–1972 was on the Harrist Church, an African “separatist” church in Côte d’Ivoire.¹⁷ Again inspired by my Cameroon experience, I perceived similarities between such African churches and African American “separatist” churches like the African Methodist Episcopal Church that separated from the segregationist white church to be autonomous in its worship.¹⁸

In the early 20th century, Christian missionaries whose goal was to “civilize the natives” were an integral part of the European colonization of Africa. Africans already had their own civilized concepts of spirituality and many created new institutions based on elements they found useful in what the missionaries tried to impose, while rejecting those they did not. Now all over the continent there are churches that reflect African ways of being Christian.¹⁹

While doing field research in Côte d’Ivoire, I also traveled through much of West, Central, and East Africa, absorbing cultural knowledge that has made Africa an integral part of my worldview. More than seventy trips to about forty countries on the world’s most diverse continent have given me a foundation for recognizing African elements in African Diasporan cultures and interpreting connections among them.

Beginning Milestones and A Map with Arrows

After my experiences in Cameroon laid the foundation, the first milestone on my path to knowing the global African Diaspora was my participation in the “First Congress of Black Culture in the Americas.” It was organized in 1977 in Cali, Colombia, by Afro-Colombian anthropologist and writer Manuel Zapata Olivella and Afro-Brazilian artist, writer, and political leader Abdias do Nascimento.²⁰

Participants were from several African countries and from predictable and unexpected places in the Americas. I learned that there were African Diasporan com munities in more parts of the Americas than I suspected. When at a party I met a man from Ecuador and told him I was surprised to meet an African descendant from a country where I thought there were mainly Indigenous people, his response was, “Dance with me. Then you’ll really know there are Black folks in Ecuador.” A second milestone conference two years later taught me that the African Diaspora extended far beyond the Americas. It was historian Joseph Harris’s 1979 “Global Dimensions of the African Diaspora” conference at Howard University in Washington, DC, which led to the book of the same name.²¹ Harris’s pioneering understanding of the global nature of the African Diaspora stemmed largely from his research in India. His book The African Presence in Asia: Consequences of the East African Slave Trade focused on voluntary as well as involuntary African migrations eastward from the continent. It also highlighted outstanding individuals of African origin and their monumental accomplishments in such unexpected places.²²

I attended many of Harris’s lectures that focused on his 1980 map of these global dimensions, which I was later pleased to find as part of the Rand McNally classroom map collection. Arrows on The African Diaspora map led from places of origin in Africa to places of resettlement across oceans, seas, and deserts. The arrows extended westward from Africa across the Atlantic Ocean to familiar places in the Americas, as well as unfamiliar ones east and north of the continent.²³ I was anxious to follow those arrows leading east and north to places where I would not have expected to find people of African origin.

Fieldwork in Brazil—Largest Nation of The African Diaspora

In 1980 I began ongoing field research in Brazil on the now rather well-known Africanity of the state of Bahia.²⁴ I then broadened my research to areas such as the state of Minas Gerais where expressions of Africanity are very different. In Bahia, the cultures most obviously represented are Yoruba and Ewe-Fon from West Africa, called in Brazil the Nago or Ketu and Jeje “nations,” and the Angola “nation” whose origins are mainly from West Central Africa. The spiritual system known as Candomblé or the Orisha tradition features African spiritual beings that are venerated in ceremonies involving polyrhythmic drumming, costumed dancing, and sacred trance.

Many think that the way Africanity is expressed in the predominantly Yoruba culture of Bahia characterizes Afro-Brazilian culture. But along with having the largest population in the African Diaspora, Brazil, not surprisingly, also has the greatest diversity in its expressions of Africanity. In Minas Gerais and other central-south and southern states, for example, spirituality of African origin is manifest in a form of Afro-Catholicism called Congada or Congado. Its African origins are from what are now the two Congos and Angola in West Central Africa and Mozambique in South East Africa.²⁵ Stories accounting for the origins of Congada speak of interactions between Africans characterized as Congos and Mozambiques who met in Brazil and maintain distinguishing symbols and roles in their ceremonies.

Unlike the veneration of African spiritual beings in Bahia, congadeiros in Minas Gerais seek blessings and guidance from Catholic saints. The spiritual beings of Congada are the Virgin Mary as Our Lady of the Rosary, and Afro- Catholic Saint Benedict, patron of Palermo in Sicily, whose parents were Ethiopian; and Saint Ephigenia from Ethiopia. During ceremonies, which involve Congo queens and kings and royal accoutrements such as capes, crowns, and staffs of office, congadeiros play drums and dance in processions to, around, and inside churches and chapels.

In Belo Horizonte, capital of Minas Gerais, I visited a Congada community that its members called a Mozambique Kingdom. It had a Congo queen, in its chapel were statues of Ethiopian saints Benedict and Ephigenia, and they called their drums goma. Ngoma in much of Bantu-speaking Africa means drum, rhythm, music, dance. I was struck by this everyday Pan-African synergy that the members of the kingdom did not understand as such because, knowing nothing about Africa, they had little idea to what extent they were recreating a Pan-Africa in the Americas.

The Afro-Brazilian Congada reflects a continuity of the royal culture of the Kongo Kingdom that, from 1390 to 1891, dominated West Central Africa from northern Angola in the south to Gabon in the north, which is also the area from which more than 45 percent of Africans were transported to the Americas.²⁶ This African expression takes the form of Afro-Catholicism in Brazil because a characteristic of the Kongo Kingdom was that with the arrival of the Portuguese at the end of the 15th century, its kings and elites converted to Catholicism, and it became known as a Christian kingdom. Thus, in parts of Brazil, Africans recreated an African Christian kingdom that their descendants continue to re-enact.

Panama Congos and Mapping “New Africa”

The other place in the Americas where Congo royal pageantry continues to thrive is Panama in Central America, where I have been doing fieldwork since 2003 during the annual Congo Period, 20 January to Ash Wednesday. Groups of people who identify as Congos in villages and towns along the Caribbean coast, and people from that area living in Panama City, speak “Congo” and build “palaces” of natural materials in which, led by their queens and kings, they drum, sing, and dance Congo on weekends and during carnival.²⁷ Whereas in Brazil it is clear that Congada is about African origins, even if participants know little about their African history, the interpretation that I have too frequently heard in Panama is that the Congos’ royal behavior represents “a parody of the Spanish crown,” rather than continuity with an African royal tradition. No one has had an answer when I have questioned when and how enslaved Africans and Afrodescendants in Panama had contact with the Spanish crown so as to know how to parody it. A less Eurocentric interpretation is that the phenomenon called “Congo” in Panama represents a recreation of the West Central African Kongo Kingdom. That Panama’s Congo phenomenon echoes that of Brazil buttresses that interpretation.

Panama’s Africanity is also explicitly written into its toponymy. Many places have names that trace an African map of the country such as La Guinea: Guinea historically designated West Africa and sometimes Africa in general; Mandinga: the major ethnic group of the Mali Empire; Carabali Hill, Calabar: an ocean port area in eastern Nigeria through which many people traveled on their way to the Americas; and El Congo, plus at least four Congo Rivers: the Kongo Kingdom. Interestingly, Panamanians, including both people who live in places with such names and Afro-Panamanians presumably interested in their African heritage, seem totally unaware of the existence and significance of what one might call a map of Nueva Africa/New Africa.

South America’s Southern Cone

In 1991, I participated in a conference organized in Buenos Aires by a religious institution of middle-class white Argentinian devotees of the Yoruba Orishas, an influence that had come from Brazil. Although mildly curious about the phenomenon of whites adopting African spiritual traditions, my real motive for attending was in hopes of meeting African descendants from the region, despite having been informed that they did not exist. Encyclopedia Britannica says that whereas in 1810 Africans and African descendants constituted about 10 percent of Argentina’s population, “the blacks and mulattos disappeared, apparently also absorbed into the dominant population.”²⁸

At the inaugural reception I asked one of the organizers if any Afro-Argentinians might be present. “There’s one,” he said, pointing to the other face in the room that looked like mine. I went over and greeted her.

“Existes?” I asked. “Existo,” she responded.

Meeting Lucia Molina, who not only existed, but was president of the Casa de la Cultura Indo-Afro-Americana in the city of Santa Fe, was exactly what I had hoped for. It was also the beginning of my meeting other African descendants from South America’s Southern Cone: Argentina, Chile, Paraguay, Uruguay, and Southern Brazil. I met Afro-Uruguayans from Organizaciones Mundo Afro that in the 1990s played a leadership role in helping other Afro-Latin American communities organize themselves.²⁹ That was a high point of consciousness raising and the forging of international connections and collaborations in Afro-Latin America. Mundo Afro held a 1994 conference that brought together Afrodescendants from throughout the Americas, and followed it with several Institutos Superiores de Formación Afro/Advanced Institutes of Afro-Training, in which I participated, with the goal of bringing together Afrodescendant leaders and future leaders to share their knowledge and develop strategies for future action.

The African Diaspora and The Modern World

In 1996, as Director of the Center for African and African American Studies at the University of Texas at Austin, I organized, with the support of UNESCO, a conference on “The African Diaspora and the Modern World.” Obviously a milestone for me, it brought together more than sixty people from more than twenty countries in Africa, Europe, and the Americas.

I like to think that this conference was significant in that, in addition to major scholars, I also invited Afro-South American community leaders who had not had the privilege of being able to become researchers, but who were quite capable of representing their communities. By including members of the Diaspora whose very existence was, and too often remains, unknown and sometimes explicitly denied, the conference promoted efforts of such invisibilized communities to become more visible in their nations and internationally. Such international exposure often led to greater domestic consideration. I was surprised when some of my scholarly colleagues asked me how I had found the Afro-South American participants. “I went to where they live” was my response.

Two results of the conference, both of which included the Afro-South American leaders as well as the scholars, were the edited volume African Roots / American Cultures: Africa in the Creation of the Americas, and the documentary film Scattered Africa: Faces and Voices of the African Diaspora, which I have recently re-edited and updated.³⁰ When a reporter for The Austin-American Statesman asked where I had gotten the idea to organize a conference on the theme of the roles and accomplishments of Africans and their descendants in creating the modern world, my immediate response was, “Foumban, Cameroon, 1964.” That obviously required an explanation. I told her about my first trip to Africa and how it had put me on the path of getting to know the global African Diaspora. Organizing the conference was part of furthering that process.

From Black to Afrodescendant

On 3 December 2000, my desire to know the major African Diasporan populations of the Americas was satisfied. The Americas Preparatory Conference held in Santiago, Chile, prior to the Durban, South Africa, United Nations World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia, and Related Intolerance, held in August–September of 2001, was a major milestone for the African Diaspora in the Americas and for my knowledge of it.

At the opening ceremony I met the Afro-Chilean delegation from the organization Oro Negro, from the town of Arica in northern Chile. Then I was thrilled to meet a man from Africville, Nova Scotia, at the other extreme of the hemisphere. I visited Africville the following summer to learn about the descendants of the Black Loyalists who were taken there after siding with the British who promised them freedom from their American enslavers during the Revolutionary War, then the War of 1812. The African Methodist Episcopal Church service I attended shouted out its continued links with its African American origins.

Beyond satisfying my desire to know the African Diaspora from Chile to Canada, the Santiago conference also accomplished something much more significant. It brought together, for the first time since our ancestors were deposited throughout the Americas by slave ships, descendants of these scattered Africans— Lusophones, Anglophones, Hispanophones, and Francophones/Creolophones— and we discussed our experiences and preoccupations and found the common ground to write a joint declaration that became a basis for the Durban Declaration and Programme of Action that led to positive public policies for Afrodescendants  in some Latin American nations.³¹ It was at Durban that the United Nations declared slavery and the slave trade a crime against humanity, which led to other activities that ultimately culminated in the UN International Decade for People of African Descent.

The statement by Afro-Uruguayan leader Romero Rodriguez, “Entramos como negros y salimos como Afrodescendientes/We came as Blacks and left as Afrodescendants,” sums up well what happened in Santiago. Having arrived as members of African American communities defined by our national identities, we came to recognize our common causes and began to see ourselves in a larger context that transgressed national boundaries and narrow identities to encompass a larger collective and transcending identity as Afrodescendants.

Generating Knowledge from The Inside

In 2002 when I left Texas to teach at Spelman College, I received a United Negro College Fund Global Center grant to develop curricular materials about Afro-Latin Americans. Unable to imagine creating a project about Afro-Latins without their involvement in its conceptualization, I invited Afro-Venezuelan scholar Jesus Chucho Garcia to collaborate with me. Aware that national histories did not tell accurate stories about Afro-Latin populations, especially those whose very existence they denied, we decided to invite Afrodescendant leaders from the nine Spanish-speaking countries in South America to meet in the Barlovento region of Venezuela, where Afro-Venezuelan culture is alive and well. Our goal was to generate a knowledge base for creating valid curricular materials. We came up with key themes for understanding the African Diaspora and asked the invitees to use them to write texts about their communities within the context of their nations’ histories.

In spite of their lack of academic training, the community leaders accepted the challenge of researching and writing about their communities. We had subsequent meetings at Spelman College and, with funds I secured from the InterAmerican Foundation, in Ecuador and Bolivia. During these gatherings we had critical discussions of the texts written by the members of what we called the Grupo Barlovento, and experienced a rich variety of diasporic realities.

I provided feedback on the evolving texts, and under my editorship we completed Conocimiento desde adentro: Los afrosudamericanos hablan de sus pueblos y sus historias/Knowledge from the Inside: Afro-South Americans Speak of their People and their Stories.³² With a chapter on each of the nine countries, the book was initially published in Bolivia in 2010 and republished by Colombia’s Universidad del Cauca in 2013.

In my introduction, I explained how it was that I, an Afro-North American, was editing a book in which Afro-South Americans spoke “from the inside.” I said that as a result of my extensive experiences in most of Africa and the African Diaspora, my sense of identity was as an African Diasporan with a U.S. passport, an accident of the slave ships that had left my ancestors in the United States rather than on other shores. My sense of identification with other African Diasporans around the world is based on our sharing similar historical and contemporary experiences and cultural commonalities. Additionally, given that fewer than 5 percent of Africans were enslaved in the United States compared to more than 45 percent in Brazil, it is statistically improbable for me to be North American rather than South American.

Following Diasporic Arrows East

To begin actively broadening my world beyond the Americas by following Joseph Harris’s arrows, in 2004 I visited a friend who was working in Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) on the Persian Gulf. On my first evening he introduced me to my first Afro-Emirati. I asked him if any of his ancestors had been pearl divers. His grandfather and father had both been divers. Pearls had been the major source of wealth of the Emirates before oil replaced them, and many divers were Afro-Emirati. I was later surprised to learn that some Africans had been enslaved and brought to the Americas because of their well-known underwater diving skills. They and their descendants dived for pearls in places such as Venezuela’s Margarita Island, Panama’s Pearl Archipelago, and Nicaragua’s Pearl Lagoon.³³

I also asked him if anyone in his family was involved with the Zar, a spiritual system involving trance that I had encountered when working in Somalia and knew existed in Ethiopia and Sudan, areas from which Africans had migrated voluntarily or involuntarily to the Emirates and other Persian Gulf countries. He said that he was a drummer in Zar ceremonies and played for the celebrations of other Emiratis. I was pleased that the two features that I thought characterized Afro- Emirati culture were accurate. It was also clear that this first glimpse of the broader African Diaspora portended by Joseph Harris’s arrows had created an irresistible incentive for me to want to follow more arrows.

Amazingly, while in UAE, as if in immediate fulfillment of my aspiration, I received an email from The African Diaspora in Asia (TADIA) Society inviting me to participate in a conference to be held in Goa, India, in January 2006. I was thrilled about the opportunity to follow another of the arrows on Harris’s map to get to know another aspect of the Diaspora east of Africa, and almost bought a plane ticket for a year too early. I was familiar with much of the limited literature and even a few documentaries on the African Diaspora in South Asia and the Indian Ocean, and was anxious to experience the realities.³⁴

In addition to learning about the research of an international array of scholars, I also encountered the people I most wanted to meet—Afro-Indians or Sidis from the major communities in the states of Gujarat, Maharashtra, Karnataka, and the city of Hyderabad in what is now Telangana state (formerly part of Andra Pradesh). In Gujarat’s capital, Ahmedabad, I visited the Sidi Sayyed Mosque with its delicately carved stone windows, incongruous in the middle of India’s urban traffic bedlam. I also spent time with a Sidi extended family whose courtyard house, and the way people lived in it, reminded me of compounds I had visited in various parts of West and Central Africa.

I was in the village of Ratanpur for the weekly Thursday ceremony for the Sidi saint Bava Gor. Villagers said that Bava Gor had come to Ratanpur from Abyssinia, now Ethiopia, eight hundred years ago as an agate merchant. He revo lutionized the agate stone industry and also demonstrated his spiritual powers by defeating a demoness who had been tormenting the villagers. A devotion to him developed and a shrine that continues to be tended by Sidis was built in his honor. The veneration of Bava Gor has spread beyond the Sidi community and beyond Ratanpur to Mumbai in Maharashtra, as other Indians—Muslims, Christians, Hindus, Zoroastrians—seek healing and blessings from the African saint.³⁵

In Maharashtra I took a dhow, an Indian Ocean sail boat, the short distance from the small town of Murud to the unconquerable island fort of Janjira, now a national landmark, from which Sidis had controlled maritime traffic on India’s Konkani coast for centuries.³⁶ And in the southwestern state of Karnataka, I bought from the Sidi Women’s Quilting Cooperative Society a brightly colored kawandi, a patchwork quilt made of sari cloth that is part of the relentlessly diasporic decor of my home.³⁷ Its syncopated aesthetics recall African American quilts.

In 2014, I returned to India to visit the Afro-Indian community in Hyderabad that I had not visited on my earlier trip and to return to Karnataka and Gujarat to learn more about the communities there. In Hyderabad, the African Cavalry Guards’ neighborhood where the Sidi community is concentrated, is located in the middle of the bustling city. Until the creation of the Indian republic in 1947, Sidi men constituted the prestigious African Cavalry Guard of the Nizam or ruler of Hyderabad, wearing fancy uniforms, riding horses, and even playing polo.³⁸

Hyderabad was the most powerful and prosperous of India’s princely states with more than 16 million inhabitants, an airline, a postal service, and other institutions befitting a huge state. With the elimination of the princely state system in 1948, the Sidis lost their role and status and are now part of the urban proletariat. Their drum-based musical style, duff, is popular beyond their community, and musicians  I met were about to play for the wedding of a Bollywood star.³⁹

In Karnataka, most Sidis live in small rural communities or in the forest where they harvest and sell products such as honey.⁴⁰ International events had had an impact on them since my previous visit. Members of a honey-selling cooperative showed me photos of the celebration they had organized when Barack Obama was elected president of the United States. A huge poster with a photo of Obama was the backdrop. When I asked why they liked him, they said that he was an “American Sidi.” They also recognized me as one of “their people.”

In an area of Gujarat that I had not visited previously, I had a sense of having experienced the diversity of Sidi realities when I met the Nawab, or ruler of Sachin.⁴¹ Although royalty no longer exists as such, and the Nawab, who is a lawyer, no longer rules over a community, he is an economically privileged high-status person who is still respected for his symbolic role. He took us to visit the family’s two palaces, one functional and the other in ruins.

The Nawab’s Abyssinian ancestors had been palace guards for Mogul emperors who had put a few of these trusted military leaders in charge of the two small princely states of Sachin and Janjira. Because they were small in number and married other elites, these high status Sidis, although acknowledging their African origins, do not have a phenotype reflecting that heritage like the majority of Sidis who have remained as distinct communities.⁴²

An Asian Milestone

By focusing on the African Diaspora in the Persian Gulf, Indian Ocean, South Asia, and other lands east of the African continent, the TADIA conference, which acknowledged the pioneering work of Joseph Harris, broke new ground from the limited perspective of the peri-Atlantic orientation of most African Diasporan research. It made a quantum leap by including a major part of the Diaspora whose existence still comes as a surprise to most.⁴³ It is ironic that the African Diaspora east of the continent is so often missing given that the first documented revolt of thousands of enslaved Africans took place in 9th century Iraq, half a millennium before the formation of the African Diaspora in the Americas.⁴⁴ By adding the long historical and geographically vast experience of this most diverse region of the global African Diaspora, the TADIA conference challenged the hegemony of the Atlantic Diaspora model. It provided new data based on different realities, such as the existence of African elites in India. And it offered new templates for broader and more complex reflections about the global nature of the African Diaspora.

Even more extraordinarily for the kind of undertaking that usually just involves scholars gathered to talk about the people they study, in the absence of and often with little concern for the interests of these people, TADIA conference organizers took the unprecedented step of following it with a workshop for Sidis. They invited a hundred or so Sidis representing communities living far apart in the huge country to meet for the first time. Members of the elite, some of whom had participated in the conference, but who have no particular relationship with the other Sidis, did not attend. Transcending differences in African origins, historical roles in India, language, religion, and regional culture, the Sidis began to get to know each other and to learn what they had in common.

I filmed much of the workshop. It took place in the several languages— Gujarati, Kannada, Urdu, and Hindi—that different groups of Sidis speak, but that I don’t, so I observed visual cues. Initially the Sidis from Gujarat and those who had migrated to Mumbai would dance in their area of the room. Then those from Karnataka would dance on their side. The few individuals from Hyderabad did not seem to constitute a group. Gradually, when one group began to dance, individuals and then small groups from the others would join in. Eventually everyone danced together.

As a result of the TADIA conference and my experiencing several very different Afro-Indian realities, I totally transcended my Atlantico-centricity and became relentlessly global in perspective. My broader worldview is reflected in the documentary Slave Routes: A Global Vision that I produced with a colleague for the UNESCO Slave Route Project. It includes the African Diaspora in Asia, the Indian Ocean, and the Persian Gulf—Iraq, Iran, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, India, Mauritius, and the Maldives—as well as in the Atlantic world of Europe and the Americas.⁴⁵

Indian Ocean Maroons

The TADIA conference also allowed me to meet Indian Ocean researchers who further expanded my world by inviting me to conferences and allowing me to learn about the African Diaspora on the Mascarene Islands east of the African continent, especially on Reunion Island. An overseas department of France, similar to Hawaii and Alaska for the United States, Reunion is unique in the African Diaspora in the extent to which the phenomenon of marooning is written into the landscape and toponymy of the island. This is especially true in Les Hauts, the highland heart of the island that was its locus.

Most of the people enslaved on Reunion were from Madagascar and the major inhabited places in the highlands are named for 18th century maroon leaders Salazie, Cilaos, and Mafate.⁴⁶ Salazie and Cilaos are remote rural communities accessible by car on very winding roads. Mafate, which consists of tiny, scattered population clusters, can only be reached on foot or by helicopter. I, of course, had to hike the four hours up the narrow cliff-hugging path to get a feel for the maroon experience.

Mafate, from mahafaty in the Malagasy language, means “lethal.” A tourist brochure said the name referred to the difficult climb. The climb may be the most lethal part of the experience for present day hikers. But Mafate was also the name of a leader of maroons who fled enslavement on lowland plantations to establish autonomous settlements in the volcanic craters of the interior. In the 18th century it was probably the fierce maroon resistance against their would-be re-enslavers that was so lethal.

Like better known maroons in Brazil, Colombia, Jamaica, and Suriname in the Americas, maroons on Reunion Island established their settlements in areas in which they were protected by the topography. Similar to my previous experiences in the maroon communities of the Americas, being in Mafate allowed me to observe immediately the extent to which the terrain itself told much of the story of how the maroons were able to resist capture. Palmares in Brazil is high up a hill surrounded by flatlands. Palenque de San Basilio in Colombia is in a forest and has only been connected for a few decades to a main road by what is still a rutted dirt road that in the rain becomes slippery mud. Accompong in Jamaica, similar to the communities in Reunion, is in the highlands in an inhospitable area characterized by deep ravines where invaders would be visible to those in higher positions. Suriname maroon settlements, accessible only by canoe or footpath, were located above river rapids in the dense rain forest.⁴⁷

Ceremonies for Ancestors East and West of Africa

Reunion also has ceremonies for ancestors from Madagascar and Mozambique. I was pleased to be invited to a servis zancet/service for the ancestors, tellingly in an area of former sugar cane plantations.⁴⁸ And I was thrilled when the family asked me to film them, moving me from the role of tolerated guest film ing them for whatever my purposes might be, to someone trusted by them to film them for their own purposes.

To begin the day, family members sacrificed fowl that an elder female ritual specialist would use to prepare the favorite dishes of the ancestors they expected to come. There would be rice for the Malagasies and tubers for the Mozambicans. During the evening ceremony, immediate ancestors, like the recently deceased husband of our hostess, as well as distant ancestors whose identities had become generic, came to dance in the bodies of people who entered sacred trances to embody them. Individual ancestors were recognized by their familiar dance gestures to their favorite music, and more distant ones by movements and colors identifying their origins.

I wondered if such family-oriented ancestral ceremonies existed on the other side of the African continent in the Americas. I had attended a ceremony for the Yoruba Eguns on Itaparica Island in Bahia, Brazil, one of the few places where such ceremonies exist. But these Eguns were more generic ancestors, not the ancestors of a specific family as on Reunion Island.

The only possibility I could imagine was the Dugu of the Garifuna people of the Caribbean coast of Central America (Belize, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua, with origins on the Caribbean island of St. Vincent). I had heard about Dugu ceremonies decades earlier. Whenever I met a Garifuna, I asked him or her to help me attend one. Although they all said they would, no one ever did. Since I was not a member of anyone’s family, no one had a reason to invite me.⁴⁹

Finally in 2012, after doing a workshop about the African Diaspora in La Ceiba, Honduras, for Afrodescendant leaders from Central and South America, I learned that there would be a Dugu in the town of Trujillo, and that the buye, the priestess in charge, had said I could attend. She welcomed me at the door of the dabuyaba, the structure erected for the ceremony, and sprayed me with rum as a purification before escorting me inside. I assumed that I would sit as unobtrusively as possible and watch, but I quickly realized that sitting and watching was not an option. There was no such role. Everyone present danced.

Honored to be in their midst, I danced around and around for three days with two hundred or so red-clad family members who had come together for the occasion. Some had come from the United States to where many Garifuna have migrated. From time to time an ancestor would come into the body of a suddenly entranced descendant to give advice, a message of solidarity, or sometimes a warning to the extended family. Someone asked me if I was shocked. I explained that I had first seen similar trance behavior in a church in New Jersey and then in Candomblé ceremonies in Brazil and a Gnawa ceremony in Morocco, although in those cases the spiritual beings were not ancestors. And I had most recently seen a ceremony for returning ancestors on Reunion Island.

Rather than shocked, I was grateful to be able to observe similar behavior with a somewhat different meaning in this Central American context. Whether the spiritual being was a Christian Spirit in the United States, a Yoruba Orisha in South America, a Gnawa Mlouk in Morocco, a Garifuna ancestor in Central America, or a Malagasy or Mozambican ancestor on Reunion, the principle was about the inti- mate relationship between spiritual and human beings that was manifest in their interaction in ritual contexts.

After three days of dancing for their ancestors, the Garifuna placed enormous offerings of the favorite dishes of their known and unknown ancestors in the ocean for all those who had perished in crossing the waters that had brought them to the shores of Honduras. I was grateful to have participated, on both sides of the African continent, in ceremonies in which ancestors came into the bodies of their entranced descendants to dance, eat, communicate, and promote extended family solidarity.

Pacific America is So African!

Throughout the 21st century I have spent time in Afrodescendant communities in all of Spanish-speaking South America, and have gotten to know where cultures of African origin are the most intensely expressed, such as Ecuador’s Pacific coast. When my plane from the highland capital of Quito descended toward the town of Esmeraldas, my reaction upon seeing the land was “Pacific America is more African than Atlantic America.” The earth and water formations I saw from the air reminded me of landing in Douala in Cameroon, and the vegetation I later saw in rural areas made me think I was somewhere in the West and Central African coastal forest.

Afro-Ecuadorian culture is most concentrated in the province of Esmeraldas, especially in the north in the river communities that I was anxious to visit. In the town of Borbón that is the gateway to the region, I met cultural icon Papa Roncón. He made, played, and taught others to play the marimba, a xylophone-like instrument that exists in many parts of Africa and is emblematic of Afro-Ecuadorian culture. In the Americas the marimba has retained its kimbundu name from Angola. Papa Roncón’s name is Guillermo Ayovi Eraso, Ayovi being a familiar family name in the Esmeraldas as it is along the African coast from Ghana to Cameroon. Afro-Ecuadoreans in the region have retained their African phenotype, and their Spanish has little in common with the one year of college Spanish that gets me by. As a result, I often looked around and wondered exactly where in Africa I was.

In the forest there are few roads to few places. Rivers are the highways, and long motorized canoes are the buses and trucks that transport passengers and merchandise to riverbank villages accessible only by water. I went to the pretty village of Playa de Oro/Beach of Gold on the Santiago River in a canoe that, in addition to twenty or so passengers, was carrying a full-size refrigerator and a giant freezer. Veering at wild angles around huge boulders as we motored up the down-rushing river seemed a little precarious, but we arrived.

In the evening in the light of a kerosene lantern, David Ayovi told me a story about the mermaid living in the river on which I had just traveled. She would sometimes be seen sitting on a rock in the river combing her long hair with a golden comb. If she left the comb on the riverbank and a man took it, he would not be seen again in the village because she would take him to her home at the bottom of the river. I had goose pimples on the hot evening as he was telling the story because I already knew it. I had heard the same story about Mamy Wata, Mother of the Waters, as she is known in Africa, by the Congo River in Central Africa, about which he knew nothing.

In Playa de Oro people still pan for gold. Mina is a common family name because many of their ancestors were brought from what the Portuguese called the Costa da Mina/Coast of Mines or Mina Coast in West Africa. They called the Africans from the area Negros Minas/Mina Blacks, and in the Pacific coast gold- producing areas of Ecuador and Colombia, Mina became a family name. The Mina Coast in West Africa was later called the Gold Coast by the British and is now independent Ghana where Elmina Castle, now a heritage tourism site, was a major point of involuntary departure for enslavement in the Americas.⁵⁰

Beginning in the mid-15th century the Portuguese had engaged in a legitimate gold trade with the Akan-speaking people in West Africa with whose skills and expertise in mining and working gold they were familiar. When the Portuguese and Spanish appropriated the gold mines of the conquered indigenous people of South America, they enslaved African experts, Negros Minas, to mine it. This was one of the major transfers of knowledge and technology from Africa that helped enrich Europe and develop the Americas.⁵¹

In addition to technological expertise, Africans also brought other sources of knowledge to the Americas, such as what might be termed wisdom stories. Afro- Ecuadorean researcher and storyteller Juan Garcia knew both the Br’er Rabbit/Tio Conejo/Uncle Rabbit and the Anansi, the spider cycles of stories common to various parts of the Americas. The former are from West Africa—from Sahelian countries such as Senegal, Mali, and Burkina Faso. The latter are from the Akan-speaking area of Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana from which the gold experts came. Garcia used them as they were originally intended—to teach social and cultural values to members of the community.

One day Juan was telling a Br’er Rabbit story to a visitor from Burkina Faso and paused for a drink of water. The Burkinabe man continued the story where Juan left off, finishing it exactly as he would have. Given that Africans have not come to the west coast of South America in centuries, that the stories had remained the same in West Africa and Pacific South America is incredible.

Juan’s Br’er Rabbit story, which was as amazing as my hearing the Mamy Wata story in Playa de Oro, in addition to the family names Mina and Ayovi, plus the marimba, supported my initial observation from the plane about how African the Pacific coast of South America was, and made me know that there was much more to discover. When I have shown my video footage to Africans from various parts of the continent, seeing the environment and people—men weaving and casting fish nets, people playing and dancing to marimbas and drums, little girls with cornrowed hair playing rhythmic hand-clapping games that I played as a child in New Jersey—each African has thought it was his or her country. I’m not sure they really believed me when I insisted that it was the Pacific coast of South America.

First Human Settlements and Global Blackness in The South Pacific

In 2014 my sense of the global African Diaspora was made more complete and complex by my final milestone journey to date—the South Pacific to the Melanesian Islands of New Caledonia and Vanuatu. I had gotten somewhat acquainted with the region when I attended the South Pacific Arts and Cultural Festival in Papua New Guinea in 1980 and was now curious to see how it fit with the rest of the global African Diaspora.⁵² Arrows on Harris’s map did not guide me to the South Pacific because his map covered only the last two millennia, and this diaspora was much older. But having followed his arrows as far as India, I was intrigued to see what lay farther east.

Melanesia in the South Pacific, half the world away from the Atlantic Ocean and the Atlantic worldview, tends to be ignored in African Diaspora discourse. It is interesting that the three Pacific island clusters are called Micronesia, small islands, and Polynesia, many islands, and that only Melanesia—black islands (Papua New Guinea, New Caledonia, Vanuatu, Solomon Islands, and Fiji), is named for the melanin-rich skin of the inhabitants. The 19th century nomenclature from the era of the creation of scientific racism offers a key to understanding how the region relates to the rest of the global African Diaspora.

To understand the South Pacific in the context of this diaspora requires a definition that involves both the African origins of humanity and contemporary concepts of Blackness. The peoples of the South Pacific have a much older and very different role in the African Diaspora than the other populations I have gotten to know. Aboriginal Australians and highland Papua New Guineans represent the first enduring settlements of the anatomically modern humans, the ancestors of all humanity, who migrated out of Africa more than 50,000 years ago to begin populating the earth in the first African Diaspora.⁵³ In contrast to Papua New Guinea, which was part of the same land mass as Australia until waters rose and separated them thousands of years ago, the other Melanesian Islands have been inhabited for only several thousands of years. This was still long before the massive diaspora of enslavement of Africans across the Red Sea, Indian Ocean, Sahara Desert, Mediterranean Sea, and Atlantic Ocean of the last two millennia.

One cannot relate this 2000-year-old diaspora to those early diasporas in terms of any kind of historical continuity. The connections are actually contemporary. After being in Australia and Papua New Guinea for fifty millennia, it is understandable that people consider that this is where they have always been, rather than thinking that they came from elsewhere. Melanesians in New Caledonia and Vanuatu told me that their ancestors had been on those islands for perhaps 4,000 years and that they had migrated from elsewhere in the South Pacific, not from Africa.

The key to my understanding came from asking people in New Caledonia and Vanuatu about their relationship to the global African Diaspora, and having them tell me that they had no connection with Africa. But when I would ask how they related to other people of African origin in the world, to other black people, they would say, “Oh, the Black Diaspora. Of course we are Black. Of course we are a part of the Black Diaspora.” So their frame of reference, rather than related to a sense of global Africanity, was rather about a sense of “Global Blackness.”

As an illustration of this identification with Global Blackness, in Australia, the Garvey movement, information about which was shared by African American and Caribbean seamen working alongside Aborigines in Australian ports, became an inspiration for early 20th century Aboriginal movements to secure equal rights. And in the mid-20th century Aborigines found inspiration for seeking greater rights in the U.S. Civil Rights Movement, the Black Panther Party, and especially in the teachings of Malcolm X. African American service men on leave from the Vietnam war were a major source of this information.⁵⁴ Thus, descendants of the oldest African Diaspora have been identifying with members of the newest Diaspora as models for their human rights struggle.

In Vanuatu, where many African American World War II soldiers were stationed in construction battalions, they were an inspiration for the Vanuatu independence movement.⁵⁵ And in New Caledonia, where the Melanesian Kanak population has been pushed into the crevices of the society by continued French colonization, young people express their identification with Global Blackness by dressing in clothes featuring images of Bob Marley and making music with a reggae beat.

During the obligatory stopover in Sydney on the way from Los Angeles to the Melanesian islands, I unexpectedly met several Australian South Sea Islanders, a group I had never heard of. I was surprised to find so many different African Diaspora/Black Diaspora communities in the region, with different historical circumstances and current situations. “We are the descendants of slaves,” they said. Thinking that there had not been slavery in Australia, I was confused. Then they said a date that I understood well: 1863!

That was the year when the British started “blackbirding,” taking people they referred to as “blackbirds” from mainly Melanesian islands to Queensland, Australia, to produce sugar. That the date corresponded with the issuing of the U.S. Emancipation Proclamation that freed many enslaved African Americans from producing sugar did not seem like a coincidence. Whereas the South Pacific process was characterized as contract labor, much blackbirding was coercive. Australian South Sea Island descendants of blackbirds now assert that it was a form of slavery.⁵⁶ In addition to seeking reparatory justice from the Australian government, Australian South Sea Islanders have been reconnecting with their families in the Solomon Islands and Vanuatu. They thus see themselves as part of a forced local diaspora that is relinking with its roots, as well as being part of the Global African/Black Diaspora.

The lesson from this encounter with descendants of the original African Diaspora and with Melanesians whose story as a people began later, but still longer ago than that of the rest of us, is to look at the African presence in the world in terms of both global Africanity and Global Blackness. In that way, the people who represent the first African Diaspora of all humans, who are looking to people from the most recent Atlantic Diaspora for guidance and inspiration in their struggle for their rights, also have their place.

The Global African Diaspora as Sidi Kawandi

My decades of anthropological quests to experience the global African Diaspora began when the Spirit intrigued me in a New Jersey church and have culminated, for now, with my learning about the original African Diaspora in the South Pacific. Not averse to canoes, climbs, or dancing for ancestors, I participated in milestone events that increased my knowledge and broadened my perspectives, and I followed Joseph Harris’s arrows along beaten and unbeaten paths toward places of diasporic participant-observation. I now have a satisfying sense of the global African Diaspora—where it is, who it is, and what it’s doing.

A surprising revelation on this quest was the amazing tenacity with which some African cultural elements remained unchanged after centuries in the Diaspora, such as Juan Garcia’s Br’er Rabbit and David Ayovi’s Mamy Wata stories in Ecuador. Other African elements have been recreated and reinterpreted as they have taken on new life in their new worlds. The way that Kongo/Congo royal culture has been perpetuated in Brazil and Panama is an example. In Brazil, it is expressed in Catholic ceremonies; in Panama it is secular and festive.

In the global African Diaspora, similar themes play themselves out in comparable ways in unrelated geographies. With no obvious historical connections, I observed similarities, for example, between characteristics of the Mlouk of the Moroccan Gnawa and the Orishas of the Afro-Brazilian Candomblé. And a phenomenon experienced in one place inclined me to look for a related one in another. A servis zancet/service for the ancestors on Reunion Island led me to the Garifuna Dugu in Honduras. The Gnawa and Candomblé ceremonies are different in structure, as are the two ancestral ceremonies. But essential elements are the same—percussion-based dancing, ritual meals, costuming, and especially the sacred trance that allows spiritual beings to inhabit their descendants’ bodies to communicate with the human community.

A characteristic inherent to the nature of the global African Diaspora, perhaps the most fundamental one, is the African to African synergies resulting from encounters of Africans with other Africans from different parts of the continent to create new cultural forms in the Diaspora. In Esmeraldas in Ecuador, a musician with a West African name plays an instrument with a Central African name, and a storyteller with the same West African name tells a Central African story. In the Congada in Brazil’s Minas Gerais, a Mozambique kingdom has a Congo queen and Ethiopian saints.

I also found a similar dynamic expressed in a similar way in India and Brazil on opposite sides of the African continent. Like the Brazilian Congada with Saint Benedict, Gujarati Sidis also venerate an Ethiopian saint, Bava Gor. And both Afro-Brazilians and Afro-Indians play instruments with Bantu names from farther south in another cultural area of Africa for their Ethiopian saints from the continent’s northeast. For Bava Gor, Gujarati Sidis play the malunga, a Bantu term for a type of musical bow called berimbau, in Brazil, which has no role in Congada music, but is used in the Afro-Brazilian martial art capoeira. Afro-Brazilians play their gomas for Saint Benedict, and the Sidis play their gomas for Bava Gor. The term goma for the Sidis still has the Bantu meanings of drum, rhythm, music, and dance, and refers to both sacred dancing for their saint and secular entertainment and performance dancing. Several Gujarati performance groups, in fact, call themselves Sidi Goma.⁵⁷

The global African Diaspora is, thus, a patchwork quilt, a Sidi kawandi, of African cultural phenomena scattered around the earth and re-assembled in diverse ways in different parts of the Diaspora to form new cultural forms that are sometimes surprisingly similar. Such rich Pan-African reconstructions deserve much more research from a relentlessly global perspective. I have merely skimmed the surface here, and look forward to following more arrows to further diasporic discoveries.

Originally published in the Journal of African American History, Vol. 100, #3, Summer 2015.

NOTES

¹Decade for People of African Descent, 2015–2024. www.un.org

²I. Dugast and M. D. W. Jeffreys, L’Ecriture des Bamum: Sa naissance, son évolution, sa valeur phonétique, son utilisation. Mémoires de l’Institut Français d’Afrique Noire (Yaoundé, Cameroon, 1950); and Christraud M. Geary, Images from Bamum: German Colonial Photography at the Court of King Njoya (Cameroon, West Africa, 1902–1915) (Washington, DC), 1988.

³Abdias do Nacimiento, Africans in Brazil: A Pan-African Perspective (Chicago, IL, 1992).

⁴Olly Wilson, “‘It Don’t Mean a Thing If It Ain’t Got That Swing’: The Relationship between African and African American Music,” in African Roots/American Cultures: Africa in the Creation of the Americas, ed. Sheila S. Walker (Lanham, MD, 2001), 153–168.

⁵Ibid.

⁶For a discussion of concepts of the African Diaspora see Colin Palmer, “Defining and Studying the Modern African Diaspora,” in American Historical Association Newsletter 36, no. 6 (September 1998): 12–15; and “The African Diaspora,” Black Scholar 30 (Fall–Winter 2000): 56–60.

⁷Adrian Miller, Soul Food: The Surprising Story of an American Cuisine, One Plate at a Time (Chapel Hill, NC, 2013); Sheila S. Walker, “Everyday Africa in New Jersey: Wondering and Wandering in the African Diaspora,” African Roots/American Cultures, 45–80.

⁸Claude Tardits, Le Royaume Bamoum (Paris, 1980).

⁹Sheila S. Walker, Du Roi Njoya à la Diaspora Africaine Mondiale: Un Témoignage d’une Africaine- Américaine,” in Le Roi Njoya: Créateur de Civilisation et Précurseur de la Renaissance Africaine, ed., Hamidou Komidor Njimoluh (Paris, 2014), 181–188.

¹⁰Sheila S. Walker, Ceremonial Spirit Possession in Africa and Afro-America: Forms, Meanings, and Functional Significance for Individuals and Social Groups (Leiden, Netherlands, 1972).

¹¹Abdelhafid Chlyeh, Les Gnaoua du Maroc: Itinéraires Initiatiques Transe et Possession (Paris, 1998).

¹²Ibid.

¹³Sheila S. Walker, Les divinités africaines dansent aux Amériques et au Maroc, La Transe, ed., Abdelhafid Chlyeh (Marrakesh, 2000), 13–32.

¹⁴Zora Neale Hurston, Mules and Men: Negro Folktales and Voodoo Practices in the South (New York, 1935); Their Eyes Were Watching God (Greenwich, CT, 1937); and Tell My Horse: Voodoo and Life in Haiti and Jamaica (New York, 1938).

¹⁵Katherine Dunham, Island Possessed (New York, 1969); and Journey to Accompong (1946).

¹⁶Melville Herskovits, The Myth of the Negro Past (New York, 1941).

¹⁷Sheila S. Walker, The Religious Revolution in the Ivory Coast: The Prophet Harris and the Harrist Church.

(Chapel Hill, NC, 1983).

¹⁸Carol V. R. George, Segregated Sabbaths: Richard Allen and the Emergence of Independent Black Churches, 1760–1840 (New York, 1973).

¹⁹George Bond, Walton Johnson, and Sheila S.  Walker, eds., African Christianity: Patterns of Religious Continuity (New York, 1979).

²⁰Primer congreso de la cultura negra de las Americas, Cali, Colombia (Bogotá, Colombia, 1988).

²¹Joseph E. Harris, Global Dimensions of the African Diaspora (Washington, DC, 1982).

²²Joseph E. Harris, The African Presence in Asia: Consequences of the East African Slave Trade (Evanston, IL, 1971).

²³Joseph E. Harris, The African Diaspora, map, 1980.

²⁴Sheila S. Walker, “The Feast of Good Death: Celebrating Emancipation in Brazil,” in Women in Africa and the African Diaspora: A Reader, ed. Rosalyn Terborg Penn and Andrea B. Rushing (Washington, DC, 1996), 203–214; “The Saints versus the Orishas in a Brazilian Catholic Church as an Expression of Afro-Brazilian Cultural Synthesis in the Feast of Good Death,” African Creative Expressions of the Divine, ed. K. Davis and E. Farajaje-Jones (Washington, DC, 1991), 84–98; “A Choreography of the Universe: The Afro-Brazilian Candomble as a Microcosm of Yoruba Spiritual Geography,” Anthropology and Humanism Quarterly 16, no. 1 (June 1991): 42–50; and “Everyday and Esoteric Reality in the Afro-Brazilian Candomble,” History of Religions: An International Journal for Comparative Historical Studies 30, no. 2 (November 1990): 103–128

²⁵Elizabeth W. Kiddy Blacks of the Rosary: Memory and History in Minas Gerais, Brazil (University Park, PA 2005); Linda Heywood, Central Africans Cultural Transformations in the American Diaspora (Cambridge, UK,

2002); and Sheila S.Walker, “Congo Kings, Queen Nzinga, Dancing Devils, and Catholic Saints: African/African Syncretism in the Americas,” in Héritage de la Musique Africaine dans les Amériques et les Caraïbes, ed. Alpha Noel Malonga and Mukala Kadima-Nzuji (Brazzaville, Congo, and Paris, 2007) 125–132.

²⁶The convention is to spell the Kongo kingdom with a “K” and the two contemporary Congo republics as well as Congo phenomena in the Americas with a “C.”

²⁷Renee A. Craft, When the Devil Knocks: The Congo Tradition and the Politics of Blackness in Twentieth Century Panama (Columbus, OH, 2015).

²⁸“Argentina: People and Ethnic Groups,” Encyclopedia Britannica, www.britannica.com, 2015.

²⁹Romero Jorge Rodríguez, “The Afro Populations of America’s Southern Cone: Organization, Development, and Culture in Argentina, Bolivia, Paraguay, and Uruguay,” in Walker, ed., African Roots/American Cultures, 314–331.

³⁰Walker, ed., African Roots/American Cultures; and Scattered Africa: Faces and Voices of the African Diaspora (film, Afrodiaspora, Inc., 2011, 2015).

³¹The Durban Declaration and Programme of Action, www.un.org.

³²Sheila S. Walker, ed., Conocimiento desde adentro: Los afrosudamericanos hablan de sus pueblos y sus histo- rias (Popayan, Colombia, 2013).

³³Kevin Dawson, “Enslaved Swimmers and Divers in the Atlantic World,” The Journal of American History (March 2006): 1327–1355; and “Swimming, Surfing, and Underwater Diving in Early Modern Atlantic Africa and the African Diaspora,” in Navigating African Maritime History, ed. Carina Ray and Jeremy Rich (St. Johns, Newfoundland, Canada, 2009), 81–116.

³⁴Shihan de S. Jayasuriya and Richard Pankhurst, eds., The African Diaspora in the Indian Ocean (Trenton, NJ, 2003); and African Identity in Asia: Cultural Effects of Forced Migration (Princeton, NJ, 2009); and Amy Catlin- Jairazbhoy and Edward A. Alpers, eds., Sidis and Scholars: Essays on African Indians (Trenton, NJ, 2004); Beheroze Schroff, Director-Documentary films: Voices of the Sidis: “We’re Indian and African” (2004); and Voices of the Sidis: Ancestral Links (2006); Sidis of Gujarat: Maintaining Traditions and Building Community (2011); Voices of the Sidis: The Tradition of the Fakirs (2011).

³⁵Beheroze Schroff, “Spiritual Journeys: Parsis and Sidi Saints” in Journeys and Dwellings: Indian Ocean Realities in South Asia, ed. Helene Basu (New Delhi, India, 2008), 256–275; and “Sidis in Mumbai: Negotiating Identities between Mumbai and Gujarat,” African and Asian Studies 6, no. 3 (2007): 305–319.

³⁶Harris, The African Presence in Asia.

³⁷Henry John Drewal, “Aliens and Homelands: Identity, Agency and the Arts among the Siddis of Uttara Kannada,” in Catlin-Jairazbhoy and Alpers, Sidis and Scholars: Essays on African Indians, 140–158.

³⁸Ababu Minda Yimene, African Indian Community in Hyderabad: Siddi Identity, Its Maintenance and Change (Cottbus, Germany, 2004).

³⁹Ibid.

⁴⁰Pashington Obeng, Shaping Membership, Defining Nation: The Cultural Politics of African Indians in South Asia (Lanham, MD, 2008).

⁴¹Kenneth X. Robbins and John McLeod, African Elites in India: Habshi Amarat (Ocean Township, NJ, 2006).

⁴²Ibid.

⁴³Kiran Kamal Prasad and Jean-Pierre Angenot, eds., TADIA: The African Diaspora in Asia: Explorations on a Less Known Fact (Bangalore, India, 2008).

⁴⁴Alexandre Popovic, La Révolte des Esclaves en Iraq au IIIe/IX Siècle (Paris, 1976).

⁴⁵Georges Collinet and Sheila S. Walker, producers, UNESCO Slave Route Project, Slave Routes: A Global Vision (Paris, 2010).

⁴⁶Prosper Eve, Les Esclaves de Bourbon: La Mer et La Montagne (Saint-Denis, Reunion, 2003).

⁴⁷H.U.E. Thoden Van Velzen and Ineke Van Wetering, In the Shadow of the Oracle: Religion as Politics in a Suriname Maroon Society (Long Grove, IL, 2004).

⁴⁸Françoise Dumas-Champion, Le Mariage des Cultures à l’Île de la Réunion (Paris, 2008).

⁴⁹Joseph O. Palacio, ed., The Garifuna, A Nation Across Borders: Essays in Social Anthropology (Belize City, Belize, 2005).

⁵⁰Jean-Michel Deveau, L’Or et les Esclaves: Histoire de Forts du Ghana du XVIe au XVIIIe Siècle (Paris, 2005). Charles R. Boxer, The Golden Age of Brazil, 1695–1750 (Berkeley, CA, 1969); and Raymond E. Dummett, El Dorado in West Africa: The Gold-Mining Frontier, African Labor, and Colonial Capitalism in the Gold Coast, 1875–1900 (Athens, OH, 1999).

⁵¹Dummett, El Dorado in West Africa.

⁵²Sheila S. Walker, A Festival Reflection on Faces, Places, Paradise (Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea, 1981).

⁵³Georgi Hudjashov, Toomas Kivisild, Peter A. Underhill, Phillip Endicott, Juan J. Sanchez, Alice A. Lin, Peidong Shen, Peter Oefner, Colin Renfrew, Richard Villems, and Peter Forster, “Revealing the Prehistoric Settlement of Australia by Y Chromosome and mtDNA Analysis,” in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. PNAS published online 11 May 2007, www.pnas.org; and Morten Rasmussen et al., “An Aboriginal Australian Genome Reveals Separate Human Dispersals into Asia,” Science 334, 94 (2011): 93–98.

⁵⁴Alyssa L. Trometter, “Malcolm X and the Aboriginal Black Power Movement in Australia, 1967-1972,”

Journal of African American History 100 (Spring 2015): 226–249.

⁵⁵Marcelin Abong, Interview, Kaljoral Senta, Port Vila, Vanuatu, 24 July 2014.

⁵⁶Clive Moore, “The Pacific Islanders’ Fund and the Misappropriation of the Wages of Deceased Pacific Islanders by the Queensland Government,” Australian Journal of Politics and History, 61 1 (2015): 1–18. doi:10.1111/ajph.12083; and Reid Morgensen, “Slaving in Australian Courts: Blackbirding Cases, 1869–1871,” Journal of South Pacific Law 13, no. 1 (2009), accessed 2 July 2015.

⁵⁷Ibid.

I invited as presenters representatives of Afrodescendent communities both little-known and often denied, such as Argentina and Uruguay, and well-known and undeniable, such as Brazil, Venezuela, and Colombia. Speaking for themselves and telling their own stories were cultural and community leaders who had been my teachers and had shared their realities with me, rather than the usual outsider researchers who studied these people, claimed to represent them, and spoke about and for them—but did not create opportunities for them to speak for themselves.

The images here are highlights from my documentary, Scattered Africa: Faces and Voices of the African Diaspora, that was filmed at the conference.¹ Click on the images to see arrows that when clicked will activate the videos.

I invited to give the keynote address Historian of Religions Dr. Charles H. Long. He had been my favorite and most enlightening professor at the University of Chicago, the sine qua non of my surviving graduate studies in Cultural Anthropology, and the major supporter of my research, publishing, and academic career. Charles Long provided a conceptual foundation for the theme of the conference and an explanatory framework for understanding the larger implications of the presentations.

Long’s assertions about the seminal role of Africans and their descendants in the creation of the Atlantic and Modern Worlds, along with conference discussions of the systemic racism that has obscured and distorted both this reality and knowledge of this reality, reflect current concerns.

The combination in 2020 of the massive national and international reactions to the grotesque public murder of George Floyd by state-sanctioned “forces of order,” coupled with the disproportionate illness and death tolls from COVID-19 of Black people in the United States, has led to an examination of the meaning of the presence and roles of African Americans, and provoked similar examinations concerning African and African descendant presences elsewhere in the Atlantic World. Demonstrators in France, Belgium, the United Kingdom, Brazil, and other countries protested discrimination against and killings of Black people. They all insisted that Black Lives Matter. As in the United States, demonstrators also tore down statues celebrating enslavers and colonizers and called into question the inhumane processes for which these men were responsible, and for which they were honored.

I produced Scattered Africa: Faces and Voices of the African Diaspora, featuring African and African descendent scholars and cultural and community leaders, to make accessible the knowledge and perspectives shared at the conference. I would have thought the documentary, originally produced in 2001 and re-edited in 2017, which I showed in many educational and cultural venues nationally and internationally, would be obsolete by now. I hoped the truths contained in it would have become common knowledge. That has not happened. The documentary continues to surprise viewers two decades later with information of which they are absolutely unaware, information basic for understanding the history and present of the Americas and the Atlantic World. 

In what became the modern Americas of the last five hundred years, a new people was born in and into this Indigenous territory that was conquered and colonized by Europe. Africans enslaved by Europeans, transformed into Afrodescendants after surviving the horrible trans-Atlantic voyage, participated in creating a “New World” that became new in large part because of their presence and contributions. They developed this land through generations of unremunerated labor and enriched it with African technological expertise and cultural knowledge. In doing so, they in myriad ways indelibly marked it as their new homeland. 

Whereas many of these ways remain to be researched, acknowledged, and properly attributed, many others were discussed at the conference and elaborated in the volume, African Roots/American Cultures: Africa in the Creation of the Americas, that resulted from it.² For example, economic historian Joseph Inikori wrote of how the Industrial Revolution was fueled by the unpaid labor of enslaved Africans and their descendants, dance scholar Brenda Dixon-Gottschild wrote of African and Afrodescendent movement vocabularies found in Euro-American concert dance, and Mario Luis Lopez and Lucia Dominga Molina wrote of contributions to Argentina of the Africans and Afro-Argentinians whose existence the country has denied, although its national dance has the Central African Bantu name—Tango.

In Scattered Africa, Howard Dodson, then Chief of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, reinforced with demographic data Long’s claims about the centrality of the African presence in the Modern World and insisted on scholars’ responsibility to tell the truths of the Americas.

These calls for an honest consideration of the influence of Africans and their descendants in the making of the Modern World involve acknowledging the motives and counteracting the mechanisms of Eurocentric demeaning of these groups. The resulting ignorance of their accomplishments and contributions was engineered to justify the enslaving of Africans and the continuing oppression of Afrodescendants. A lack of knowledge of the importance of their own history leads some U.S. African Americans to embrace a a limited and limiting identity.

CHL:³ “This is important for African Americans. First, so they will not have a false sense of who they are, and second, so they can know the modes by which other Africans in the Americas figured out and understood their lives. They need to be in communication with them to have a sense of a much wider world and a deeper world of meaning.” 

CHL: “At this conference, we are in so many ways allowing the facts to speak for themselves, and out of that are beginning to see the beauty, the truth, the openness of this African world in the Americas. People of African descent must take our freedom from the resources we have, and part of that arsenal is our Africanity. Africa was never forgotten. So over these hundreds of years, being in Africa while being away from Africa was a lived reality.”

CHL: “We have retained whatever understanding or memory we have of Africa, not just as a relic, but as a useful meaning of how we cope with the world. We have used Africa as a creative mode of maintaining ourselves in an alien land. So part of being an African of the Diaspora meant that we were always going back to Africa, even when we stayed in the same place. We never stopped being Africans.”

These dancers, who illustrate so well Long’s words to music played by Cameroonian Georges Collinet, are from different North and South American nations, had never danced together, and had never heard the Central African tune to which they were dancing. Yet they “recognized the beat.”

Long concludes with an observation—and a challenge.

NOTES

¹ Scattered Africa: Faces and Voices of the African Diaspora, 2001, Afrodiaspora, Inc., 2017.

² Walker, Sheila S. Editor, African Roots/American Cultures: Africa in the Creation of the Americas. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2001.

³ These quotations from Charles Long are from the same interview as the video clips shown here.

Despite Egypt’s early endeavors in exporting its films to Africa, chiefly for the Arab diaspora, no real effort was invested in bringing African films to Egypt. That’s why the Luxor Film Festival is a significant milestone for African films in Egypt today. 

Launched in 2012, the Luxor African Film Festival has been building up momentum to reach out to different artists and filmmakers from the African continent, bridging the gap between Arabic-speaking African countries and the rest of the continent.

Beginnings

The Luxor African Film Festival (LAFF) was initiated by the Independent Shabab Foundation (ISF), a non-profit organization active, since 2010, in the arts.

It was the brainchild of ISF’s writer Sayed Fouad’s and director Azza Elhosseiny, who noted the lack of African film screenings in Egypt. The city of Luxor, classified as a World Heritage Site by the UNESCO in 1979 and home to unique monuments and antiquities, hardly hosted any significant cultural or artistic events. It was the first time in Egypt an NGO organized an event of such caliber.

It also came at a time when Egypt was seeking to renew its ties with sub-Saharan Africa and the Nile basin countries after a period of stillness.

ISF started working on the festival since mid-2010, securing numerous partnerships ranging from the Ministry of Culture in Egypt to international networks. About 110 young filmmakers from 37 different African countries have been trained on how to produce low-cost short films under the mentorship of award winning Ethiopian director Haile Gerima, for several years.

The Place: Luxor

Since its very first editions, LAFF established its main celebrations in the victorian style hotel Winter Palace, where the main hosts also stayed. That same hotel played host to hundreds of international journalists and foreign visitors in 1922, who were following the day-to-day story of the discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb by Howard Carter who used the hotel’s noticeboard to deliver occasional news and information on the discovery. It’s not a coincidence that the organizers have chosen “Tutankhamun” as the shield for the awards!

Over 500 miles south of Cairo, Upper Egypt has been long-neglected by officials. Saddled with decades of institutional apathy, this agricultural valley of the Nile has been dismissed for decades as a lost cause, a place from which the locals leave to seek better employment in Cairo. The region has few community centers, and even fewer theaters. For some cities such as Luxor, the economy supports itself with tourism, relying on the surrounding abundance of pharaonic monuments to draw busloads of tourists to its dusty backstreets and tree-lined corniche.

Home to half a million people, Luxor is built on the ancient city of Thebes. Here, dynasties of pharaohs ruled between the 16th and 17th centuries BC, at the height of their power. There are the tombs of kings and queens which attract millions of tourists every year. Why a film festival in Luxor? According to Fouad and El Hosseiny, the Shabab Independent Foundation wanted to take the festival into a city other than Cairo and Alexandria which are saturated with cultural events.

So for more than eight editions, the festival opened in places steeped in history like the colonnaded Terrace Temple of Hatshepsut, the Temple of Karnak, considered the most remarkable religious complex ever built on earth and the Temple of Luxor, where once stood the famous obelisk of Rameses II for over 3300 years before being taken to Place de la Concorde in Paris in 1836. 

It is under the columns of these temples and under the mineral gaze of the ram headed sphinxes that the opening and closing ceremonies were taking place.

The first edition, planned for 2011, had to be postponed because of the 25th of January 2011 popular uprising. The first edition took place in February 2012 amidst a lot of uncertainty and financial problems, as the government have cancelled most major festivals after the 2011 events. The Cairo International Film Festival, the Dance Theatre Festival, the Experimental Theatre Festival and the TV and Radio Festival were all put on hold by the Ministry of Culture. Though partially funded by the government, LAFF is asserting its independence from the ministry.

For El Hosseiny, the executive director of the festival, it was time for civil society to fill in the gaps left by government ministries struggling to adapt in a prolonged interim period.

“Before there were only ministries who made festivals, especially in cinema,” she said at time, adding: “after the revolution, things had to change. We have now developed good experience in organizing events, and the government institutions have become very deficient, so now it’s our role to play in this era.” 

To host the festival, organizers built temporary screening houses in Luxor’s ancient pharaonic temple and adapted the city’s newly opened cultural palace, a community center and museums for showings. In all, the festival will have five venues. “There was one cinema in the area, and the projector hadn’t been used for 20 years. We were also screening at a youth centre, where the projector there was a lot better off because it was previously used for only three years,” remembers Azza El Hosseiny. 

Its regulations specify that it screens films produced by African countries or by African directors from any part of the world. It started with two competitions, long narratives and long documentaries.

In the 2020 edition, LAFF had five competitions and more than four other sections.

Big Names

LAFF paid tribute to prominent African Figures from the continent and the Diaspora in the first edition, such as award-winning Ethiopian director, Haile Gerima, who is considered as the “Godfather of LAFF” as he attended the festival for five consecutive years, with two of his collaborators, teaching film directing to young African filmmakers within the main international workshop. 

Veteran Egyptian director, Daoud Abdel Sayed, was also honored during this first edition. The Tunisian director, Reda Behi, was invited to mentor the first international workshop. The second edition was dedicated to Ousmane Sembène, the late Senegalese director, and paid tribute to veteran directors, Moustapha Alassane from Niger and Souleymane Cissé from Mali. Every edition was named after a pioneer from Africa, including Egypt. Safi Faye (Senegal), Hollywood star Danny Glover, Cheikh Oumar Cissoko (Mali), Mansour Sora Wade (Senega), Pedro Pimenta (Mozambique), Maïmouna N’Diaye (Burkina Faso), Hollywood star Jimmy Jean-Louis, Baba Diop (Senegal), Moroccan directors Saâd Chraïbi, Nour-Eddine Lakhmari, Ezz Alarab Al Alaoui, the producer and writer Firdoze Bulbulia (South Africa), director Kunle Afolayan (Nigeria), Amjad Abu Alala (Sudan) and producer Dora Bouchoucha (Tunisia).

In 2013, the LFF established the Etisal Film Fund to support African film. Eight short feature films and a number of long documentaries were produced, and two long features were developed, all from 16 different African countries.

To expand its international reach, the LFF created partnerships and cooperation protocols with 28 African festivals inside and outside of the continent. Locally, it established three cinema clubs for African cinema in Cairo, Alexandria and Luxor, in cooperation with the Egyptian Ministry of Culture.

The 28th edition of the New York African Film Festival (NYAFF) returns with a virtual program celebrating the shared aspirations that drive humanity through time and the voices of the women who push the culture forward while preserving treasured traditions.

Presented by Film at Lincoln Center (FLC) and African Film Festival, Inc. (AFF), this year’s NYAFF will showcase ten features and 21 short films from Africa, Europe, North America, and South America. The event will be presented under the banner “Notes from Home: Recurring Dreams & Women’s Voices” in FLC’s Virtual Cinema from February 4 to 14 and in the Maysles Documentary Center Virtual Cinema from February 18 to March 4.

Presenting an array of offerings that capture “Africanness” in its myriad iterations and manifestations, NYAFF spotlights the global Black community’s influence on our cultural pasts, present, and futures. 

The Opening Night film is Desmond Ovbiagele’s The Milkmaid, Nigeria’s entry for the 2021 Academy Award for Best International Feature Film. Depicting the impact of extremism on the families of those it touches, the drama follows a Fulani milkmaid as she confronts the religious insurgents who kidnapped her sister. 

The Centerpiece selection is Lemohang Jeremiah Mosese’s acclaimed Sundance prizewinner, This Is Not a Burial, It’s a Resurrection, which recently became Lesotho’s first-ever Oscar entry. The film paints a stirring portrait of an elderly woman whose plans for death are interrupted when news arrives that her village will be flooded and its inhabitants resettled to make way for a reservoir. 

Other features in the program include the documentary Sankara Is Not Dead, which follows the young poet Bikontine as he travels along Burkina Faso’s only rail line in the wake of the 2014 uprising and encounters the enduring legacy of the late President Thomas Sankara; Pascal Aka’s Afro-noir Gold Coast Lounge, about a Ghanaian crime family fighting to prevent its lucrative lounge from getting shut down by the government amidst danger and intrigue; Mohamed Ismail’s La Mora, in which a young Spanish woman embarks on a journey of self-discovery to Morocco after finding a secret about her parentage in a letter left behind by her late mother; Amleset Muchie’s Min Alesh?, an Ethiopian drama about a young woman’s quest to change her family’s fate through her passion for running; Hawa Aliou N’diaye’s documentary Invisible Husband, which introduces audiences to the phenomenon of jinn possession in the director’s community in Mali; Atiq Rahimi’s Our Lady of the Nile, based on Scholastique Mukasonga’s semi-autobiographical novel of the same name, which brings viewers into the lives of teenage girls at a prestigious Rwandan boarding school as a growing inferno engulfs their nation; and A Day with Jerusa, which captures a mystical, intergenerational encounter between two Black women in Sāo Paolo, Brazil.

The feature presentations also include a new restoration of  Camera d’Afrique (African Cinema: Filming Against All Odds), Férid Boughedir’s 1983 documentary capturing the rise and the striking visions of African auteurs like Ousmane Sembéne, Souleymane Cissé, Safi Faye, Oumarou Ganda, and Gadalla Gubara at a time when African countries were emerging from the shadows of colonialism.

This year’s NYAFF will showcase a retrospective of trailblazing filmmaker Fanta Régina Nacro, who became the first woman from Burkina Faso to direct a fiction film with her 1991 short, A Certain Morning (Un Certain Matin). A founding member of the African Guild of Directors and Producers, Nacro explores modernity and tradition from a woman’s perspective in films that are poignant, satiric, and often surprisingly comic. A program of her shorts will include A Certain Morning, Bintou, Open Your Eyes (Puk Nini), and Konaté’s Gift (Le truc de Konaté). Nacro will join the festival for a special Q&A about her career.

“Each generation takes a sprint and then passes the baton. Looking back, our filmmakers act as modern-day griots, grabbing that baton and weaving the story of their time while also propelling us forward,” said AFF Executive Director and NYAFF Founder Mahen Bonetti. “This year’s festival captures that look toward the past that helps our storytellers meet the present moment with inspiration from the elders.”

The 28th NYAFF will present 17 additional films in three genre-spanning shorts programs. “Notes from Home,” an exploration of Africa on the continent and abroad, includes Joe Penney’s Sun of the Soil, Marin Sander-Holzman’s 1000 Songs, Che Applewhaite’s A New England Document, and Akosua Adoma Owusu’s Pelourinho: They Don’t Really Care About Us. “New World Order” presents tales of women power throughout the ages, including Chelsea Odufu’s Black Lady Goddess, Hlumela Matika’s Tab, Vatora Godwin’s Omi, Mmabatho Montsho’s Joko Ya Hao, Kyung Sok Kim’s Furthest From, and Tomisin Adepeju’s Appreciation. “City Dreams,” a tapestry of desires expressed and realized in urban areas around the globe, includes E. G. Bailey’s KEON, Laurence Attali’s Tabaski, Ukachi Arinzeh’s The Inconvenience of Being Black, Will Niava’s Zoo, Edem Dotse’s Linger, Sylaz Ud’ee’s The Elevator, and Manu Luksch’s ALGO-RHYTHM.

The NYAFF Digital Art Exhibition will also feature a short visual excerpt from poet and author Ladan Osman’s Exiles of Eden and short experimental and performance works by Kenyan artist Ingrid Mwangi. Mwangi and her partner Robert Hutter, together known as Mwangi Hutter, often use their own bodies as sounding boards to reflect on social interrelationships. These works will be presented on africanfilmny.org. More details about talks and events will be announced in the coming weeks on filmlinc.org.

Beginning February 18, the festival has a two-week virtual run at the Maysles Documentary Center. Additional details on this segment of the event will be announced shortly.

Film at Lincoln Center Virtual Cinema tickets are $12, and go on sale on Friday, January 22 at noon. See more and save with the discounted NYAFF All-Access Pass. Film at Lincoln Center members save an additional 20% on individual rentals and the all-access pass. Learn more at filmlinc.org/AFF2021.

The programs of AFF are made possible by the generous support of the National Endowment for the Arts, New York State Council on the Arts, NYC Department of Cultural Affairs, Mayor’s Office of Media and Entertainment, Bradley Family Foundation, The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, New York Community Trust, The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Communities of Color Nonprofit Stabilization Fund, Domenico Paulon Foundation, Motion Picture Enterprises, Manhattan Portage, Black Hawk Imports and Royal Air Maroc. 

FILMS & SYNOPSES

Opening Night
The Milkmaid
Desmond Ovbiagele, Nigeria, 2020, 136m
Hausa with English subtitles
Set in a village in sub-Saharan Africa, Desmond Ovbiagele’s thriller tells the story of Aisha, a Fulani milkmaid, who is kidnapped by religious extremists along with her younger sister Zainab. Aisha manages to escape, but she decides to go back and confront the extremists to try and bring Zainab home. Her quest proves complicated in a world of festering conflict. The Milkmaid—chosen as Nigeria’s entry for the 2021 Academy Awards—showcases the vibrancy of Hausa and Fulani culture while drawing attention to the plight of the victims of the real-life militant insurgency in Nigeria.

Centerpiece
This Is Not a Burial, It’s a Resurrection
Lemohang Jeremiah Mosese, 2019, Lesotho/South Africa/Italy, 120m
Sesotho with English subtitles
In the mountains of Lesotho, an 80-year-old widow named Mantoa eagerly awaits the return of her son—her only living kin—from the South African mines where he works. When instead she receives news of his death, she puts her affairs in order and makes arrangements to be buried in the local cemetery. Her careful plans are upset abruptly by the news that provincial officials intend to resettle the village, flood the entire area, and build a dam for a reservoir. Determined to die on her own terms and in her own land, Mantoa resolves to defend the spiritual heritage of her community.

Caméra d’Afrique (African Cinema: Filming Against All Odds)
Férid Boughedir, 1983, Tunisia/France, 95m
French with English subtitles
Seventy years after the invention of the cinema—and after several decades of colonial cinema using Africa as an exotic setting, often denying humanity and dignity to its people—newly independent Africans finally took hold of the movie camera. Undeterred by the lack of means and infrastructure, they showed African reality in its variegated forms, seen at last through African eyes. Using extracts from significant films, interviews with filmmakers, and rare vintage footage, Camera d’Afrique recalls the first 20 years of the new auteur cinema of Sub-Saharan Africa, which bears witness to an indefatigable—and still-enduring—drive for self-expression. 2K restoration from the original 16mm print done by the Laboratory of the CNC with the support of L’Institut français.

A Day With Jerusa
Viviane Ferreira, Brazil, 2020, 74m
Portuguese with English subtitles
The lives of two women intersect in Viviane Ferreira’s beguiling film, set in São Paolo, Brazil. Silvia is a young medium and a market researcher struggling to make ends meet while awaiting the results of a public exam. Jerusa is a gracious 77-year-old lady who bears witness to daily life in Bixiga, a neighborhood that brims with ancestral memories. On Jerusa’s birthday, while she waits for her family’s arrival, an encounter between her deepest memories and Silvia’s mediumship allows the two of them to travel through time and their intertwined histories.

Gold Coast Lounge
Pascal Aka, 2019, Ghana, 119m
English and Ga with English subtitles
In this Afro-noir set amid the nightlife of post-independence Ghana, a crime family has to unite and clean up their act before the government shuts down their lucrative lounge. When their leader is mysteriously poisoned, it is up to Daniel—the eldest son—to take power. As Daniel struggles to implement his own policies, he is faced with power tussles, love triangles, tribalism, and a murder investigation.

Invisible Husband / Un Invisible mari
Hawa Aliou N’Diaye, 2020, Mali, 68m
Bambara and French with English subtitles
Malian filmmaker Hawa Aliou N’Diaye believes that she is possessed by a jinn. In this documentary, she interviews other women in her community who also believe that they are controlled by jinn, which in some cases claim to be their husbands. Delving into Malian traditions and myths, N’Diaye explores the ethereal dimensions of the world around her.

Min Alesh?
Amleset Muchie, 2019, Ethiopia, 84m
Amharic with English subtitles
Set in Merkato, a sprawling, open-air market in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, Min Alesh? tells the inspiring story of 21-year-old Selam, whose perseverance transforms her life for the better. Having grown up amid poverty and hardships, Selam is determined to change her and her family’s circumstances through her passion for running. An international race offers her a chance to achieve her dream.

La Mora
Mohamed Ismail, 2020, Morocco, 91m
Spanish and Arabic with English subtitles
After her mother, Maria, passes away, Rosa, a young Spanish woman, discovers the secret of her biological roots in one of her mother’s old letters. The letter recounts how Maria fell in love with Rosa’s father, Choaib, who was one of the many young Moroccan soldiers (known as the Regulares) forced to fight alongside General Francisco Franco’s troops in the Spanish Civil War. Rosa journeys to Morocco to meet her paternal family and discovers the reasons for her father’s death.

Our Lady of the Nile
Atiq Rahimi, 2019, France/Belgium/Rwanda, 93m
French and Kinyarwanda with English subtitles
Rwanda, 1973. At Our Lady of the Nile, a prestigious Catholic boarding school perched on a hill, young girls are trained to become the Rwandan elite. They share the same dormitories, dreams, and teenage concerns. But both within the school and without, a deep-seated antagonism is rumbling, about to change these young girls’ lives—and the entire country—forever.

Sankara Is Not Dead
Lucie Viver, 2019, Burkina Faso/France, 109m
French with English subtitles
After Burkina Faso’s October 2014 popular uprising, the young poet Bikontine starts to question his dreams of seeking a better life in the West. He decides to go meet his fellow citizens along the country’s only rail line. From south to north, through cities and villages, he learns about their dreams and disappointments, confronting his poetry with the realities of a rapidly shifting society. His journey ultimately reveals the enduring political legacy of storied former president Thomas Sankara, who was known as the “African Che Guevara.”

Spotlight on Fanta Régina Nacro

With 1992’s Un Certain Matin, Fanta Régina Nacro became the first woman from Burkina Faso—home to FESPACO, the largest Pan-African film festival in the world—to direct a fiction film. Since then, Nacro has developed a rich body of shorts (as well as one feature film) in which the old and the new cohabitate, illustrating stories from her matrilineal upbringing. Her work depicts the courtyard effect: the entire community comes together to agree and disagree but always finds a positive and collective path to a solution. As Nacro eloquently states: “It is a vision, a certain gaze on our world, that we are proposing.”

A Certain Morning / Un Certain Matin
Fanta Régina Nacro, 1992, Burkina Faso, 13m
Mooré and French with English subtitles
Fanta Nacro’s debut film is a provocative look at cinematic illusions versus deadly realities. Riga is a farmer who lives peacefully with his wife and children on the Mossi plateau. When he hears a woman calling for help one day, his entire world is called into question. The first fiction film directed by a Burkinabé woman, A Certain Morning was presented at the 1992 Carthage Film Festival.

Open Your Eyes / Puk Nini
Fanta Régina Nacro, 1995, Burkina Faso, 30m
Dioula with English subtitles
A beautiful noble Senegalese woman arrives one day in Ouagadougou, the capital of Burkina Faso, and creates chaos through the city with her remarkable seductive powers.

Konaté’s Gift / Le truc de Konaté
Fanta Régina Nacro, 1997, Burkina Faso, 27m
Dioula with English subtitles
When Djénéba returns from the city where she has been visiting her cousin, she brings her husband, Konaté, a wonderful gift: a condom. Konaté is furious and refuses to change his habits. Djénéba, well aware of the effects of AIDS, refuses to give in.

Bintou
Fanta Régina Nacro, 2001, Burkina Faso, 31m
Mooré with English subtitles
Bintou wants to make sure that her daughter goes to school, but her husband Abel doesn’t think it’s worth it and claims there is only enough money to educate their sons. But Bintou won’t give up and starts her own business to make the extra money. Abel, wary of losing control and scared that Bintou’s newfound financial freedom will lead her to adultery, tries to sabotage her efforts. Bintou tackles sexuality, gender relations, and the fraught relationship between tradition and modernity with joyful satire.

Shorts Program: Notes from Home Part. 2
60min

A continuation of a theme from the 27th NYAFF, this program of shorts explores layered histories, notions of home, and the footprints of Africa in the world.

Sun of the Soil
Joe Penney, 2019, USA, 26m
English and French with English subtitles
In 14th-century Mali, an ambitious young royal named Mansa Musa ascended the throne of the richest kingdom in human history. Sun of the Soil follows Malian artist Abdou Ouologuem on a journey to discover the truth behind the legendary African king. Abdou and Musa’s arcs weave together, punctuated by performances that illustrate key moments in Musa’s reign.

1000 Songs
Marin Sander-Holzman, 2020, USA, 10m
1000 Songs features 83-year-old Brooklyn musician and R&B singer Ricky Rose. Ricky has been playing music for 70 years, and despite never making it to the big leagues, his passion for performing live has never dimmed.

A New England Document
Che Applewhaite, 2020, UK, 16m
Using found footage with selected images and text from The Marshall Family Collection at Harvard University’s Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, A New England Document reconstructs the impulse of two ethnographers’ photographic encounters in the Kalahari Desert in Namibia from a reparative perspective.

Pelourinho: They Don’t Really Care About Us
Akosua Adoma Owusu, 2019, USA/Brazil, 9m
English and Portuguese with English subtitles
Freely inspired by a 1927 letter from American sociologist and Pan-Africanist W.E.B. Du Bois to the American embassy in Brazil, this colorful film takes us back to a time when it was impossible for African Americans to travel to Brazil and reminds us of the inequality still faced by the Black inhabitants of that country.

Shorts Program: New World Order
118min

Set in the past as well as the speculative future, the shorts in the program tell nuanced stories about women of various generations.

Black Lady Goddess
Chelsea Odufu, 2019, USA, 25m
In Black Lady Goddess, a satirical Afrofuturistic series set in the year 2040, humans have discovered that God is a Black woman, and reparations of $455,000 have been issued to each person of African descent. In this brave new world, a young activist, Ifeoma Johnson, comes into her own.

Tab
Hlumela Matika, 2019, South Africa, 13m
English and Xhosa with English subtitles
Khanya and Sandiswa’s father leaves them in his car outside the local horse racing tracks under strict instructions to stay put. Khanya gets her period and decides to enter the arena. When she is confronted by her father, the true confines of their delicate relationship come to light.

Omi
Vatora Godwin, 2019, USA, 12m
When a salacious tape threatens a woman’s marriage, an unexpected encounter offers her a door she must choose to open or close.

Joko Ya Hao
Mmabatho Montsho, 2020, South Africa, 36m
Xhosa, Zulu, and English with English subtitles
Set in 1955 in Gracetown, South Africa, Joko Ya Hao follows Nozizwe, a 30-year-old woman who dreams of becoming a lay preacher in the Methodist Church. Standing in her way is Mr. Mvelase, a theology teacher who does not believe in women’s ability to lead. As Nozizwe confronts Mr. Mvelase’s prejudices, she also finds herself facing a bigger problem: the forced removals of Black South Africans by the apartheid government. Inspired by the memory and spirit of Winnie Mandela, Joko Ya Hao is a celebration of the power of women.

Furthest From
Kyung Sok Kim, 2020, USA, 18m
1999, Novato, California. Eight-year-old girl Jessie is enjoying what little time she has left to spend with her best friend, Lucas. The trailer park they live in will soon be closed due to MTBE water contamination, and the whole community will be forced to evacuate. For Jessie, this means learning to say goodbye to all that tethers her to her little pink trailer.

Appreciation
Tomisin Adepeju, 2019, UK, 14m
When an African Pentecostal pastor in London undergoes a life-changing event, she questions everything she believes in.

Shorts Program: City Dreams
104m

Tales of love, struggle, and resilience that paint a bold and expressive mosaic of the African diaspora.

KEON
E.G. Bailey, 2020, USA, 27m
Keon, a young Black photographer, embarks on a journey with his brothers Amiri and Dre to acquire a new camera to complete his art school admission portfolio. Along the way, the three of them negotiate obstacles and dangers, confronting an environment intent on policing their bodies and expression.

Tabaski
Laurence Attali, Senegal/France, 2019, 26m
French, English, and Wolof with English subtitles
In Dakar, a few days before the feast of Tabaski, a painter shuts himself away in his studio to work on the theme of the ritual sacrifice of the ram. Red paint drips from sketches hanging on clotheslines. An inscription on the wall reads: “Tabaski, who’s next?.” Three characters and a sheep revolve around him and reconnect him with reality. Blending fiction, art and politics, this film is freely inspired by Iba Ndiaye, who through his work addressed the victims of colonization, segregation, and apartheid and the wave of assassinations in post-colonial Africa and the diaspora.

Zoo
Will Niava, 2019, UK, 10m
A misunderstanding between three teenagers and a troubled man escalates to a point of no return.

Linger
Edem Dotse, 2019, USA, 9m
While making dinner one night, an immigrant contemplates his complicated feelings toward his girlfriend back home.

The Inconvenience of Being Black
Ukachi Arinzeh, 2020, USA, 8m
During a routine traffic stop, a young motorist faces the challenge of driving while Black.

The Elevator
Sylaz Ud’ee, 2019, USA, 17m
Ben and Sharon work in the same building. One evening, on their way out, they are trapped together in a malfunctioning elevator.

ALGO-RHYTHM
Manu Luksch, 2019, UK/Austria/Senegal, 14m
French, Wolof, English, and German with English subtitles
Shot in Dakar with the participation of leading Senegalese musicians, poets, and graffiti artists, ALGO-RHYTHM probes the rise in the algorithmic management of daily life and the insidious threats it poses to human rights and agency. Using hip hop, drama, street art, and data-driven filmmaking, Manu Luksch’s film explores how our embrace of machine intelligence, refracted through the slick interfaces of smartphone apps, makes us vulnerable to manipulation by political actors.

Maysles portion of the line-up to be announced soon.

It was the first time that I participated with the four friends in a screening at a village, after they set up the canvas screen and the show started, sandy wind began to blow moving the screen left and right, two of them (Manar and Ibrahim) quickly got up and sat on each side of the screen to anchor it down by tying both corners to their chairs; no one left despite the wind and the audience continued watching the film engagingly, as the wind strengthened the screen blew up and deflated like the sails of a small boat and sometimes the picture would go out of frame and come back; I was watching the faces of both men as they held the screen while laughing nervously like sail men in a storm. It was then when I felt that this casual trip to a nearby village to Khartoum granted me one of my most important existential lessons of resistance. It ignited the need to make the film.

This image that granted me the motivation to create this film will not be included in the film just like the many other images that these four cinematographers wanted to accomplish in the past forty years but the aggressive political winds of the country stood against them.

When I think of the film I think of these missing images, the images that aren’t present because they were erased before they became reality, leaving behind a great desire in doing and imagination.

Maybe to me the whole idea of the film is to tell, what can’t be seen because it was prohibited from being, and my hope is to make it tangible through the four characters and their devotion, their visible bitterness mixed with their witty sense of humor, through it I want to tell about their strong loyalty and love for cinema, this love “realized of desire still desiring” as once wrote the poet Rene Char.

Over the years that followed that trip I started to know them much deeper and in spite their different personal stories I came to notice that they share their conscious choice of taking difficult paths. They preferred to pay the price than to sell themselves to any authority, by that they kept their expensive freedom. They also share an inexhaustible faith in the value of deeds regardless of how small they appear to others; they are a different example and a necessary one in times dominated by the culture of consumption and narcissistic show.

It was clear to me from the beginning that it will not be a historical film about the Sudanese cinema. I have a great degree of predilection to what has been accomplished by those four in the past, and a strong love of their films and to their persistence to move and challenge in the present; this is why my choice was to tell the story with the focus on the present. I wanted for the rich past of the characters to be revealed through its remnants in the present and through their own films.

The fact that the film speaks about cinema in Sudan; it is naturally a film that criticizes the political state of Sudan where cinema halls were shut down, some were destroyed or transformed into storage spaces and parking lots for banks, one cinema became the office for the military’s radio station. But I don’t want this film to become a weeping story about the country’s situation and not to be a simplified and a belittling presentation of the deep, complex wounds of my homeland. I want the film to be loyal to the characters and their way in handling wounds delicately yet with perseverance.

The shooting of the film began in difficult times, as Sudan is a complex space to create a film that doesn’t go through official channels, the film also faced many technical and financial challenges; I’m grateful for Ibrahim, Manar, Sulieman and Altaib, they were able to transform all the doubts and the extremely difficult times to swings of laughter and a sarcastic resisting force of all difficulties.

Presented by Film at Lincoln Center and African Film Festival, Inc.,
the 27th edition of the NYAFF runs online December 2-6.

Under the banner “Streaming Rivers: The Past into the Present,” the New York African Film Festival (NYAFF) returns virtually December 2-6 with a spotlight on the cinema of two nations: Nigeria and the Sudan. Presented by Film at Lincoln Center (FLC) and African Film Festival, Inc. (AFF), this year’s regional NYAFF will screen six features and eight short films in the FLC Virtual Cinema, as AFF celebrates its 30th anniversary.

The festival will transport audiences to the Sudan and Nigeria, two nations whose film industries were disrupted in their nascency—in Nigeria by an economic decline in the late 1970s and early 1980s; in Sudan by the dictatorship of Omar al-Bashir, whose 30-year grip on the country was ended by the 2019 uprising. In recent years, Sudan’s film industry has been revived by an emerging crop of filmmakers, who are also dedicated to restoring the works of the veterans on whose shoulders they stand. Nollywood can claim the mantle of being Africa’s homegrown film industry, which has influenced filmmakers globally and provided the template for other nations to jump-start their own nascent motion picture businesses.

The event includes films from some of each nation’s trailblazing directors and latest wave of filmmakers. NYAFF will present two of esteemed Sudanese filmmaker Ibrahim Shaddad’s brilliant works: Hunting Party (1964) and Human (1994). Suhaib Gasmelbari’s acclaimed documentary Talking About Trees captures the efforts of Shaddad and fellow friends and retired Sudanese filmmakers Manar Al Hilo, Suleiman Mohamed Ibrahim, and Altayeb Mahdi—each of whom was trained abroad and whose work was suppressed for decades by Islamist censorship after the 1989 coup—to reopen an outdoor cinema. Among the film’s 12 prizes is the Panorama Audience Award at the 2019 Berlin Film Festival and the Documentary Award at the 2020 Palm Springs International Film Festival.

The Opening Night film is Amjad Abu Alala’s arresting drama You Will Die at 20, winner of the Lion of the Future “Luigi de Laurentiis” Award for a Debut Film at the 2019 Venice Film Festival and Sudan’s first-ever entry for Best International Feature Film, for the upcoming 93rd Academy Awards. In the film, a young man, who the village’s holy man has prophesied will die as he reaches his second decade, turns 19.

Nollywood, the world’s most prolific film industry after Bollywood, was born out of the resourcefulness of creatives working despite economic challenges. NYAFF’s Centerpiece film is the 40th anniversary screening of Kadara (“Destiny”), the debut work of one such filmmaker, the late Adeyemi Afolayan (known as Ade Love), considered one of the fathers of Nollywood. Afolayan wrote and stars in the humorous film, which captures the rivalry between a handsome, charming farmer and a rich brute as they compete in a wrestling contest to prove their worthiness for the hand of the kingdom’s beautiful princess.

In Three Thieves, Udoka Oyeka’s Nigerian comedy, three friends hired to commit a simple theft end up as accidental kidnappers—all while being pursued by the police and the robber whose job they took.

Filmed over four years, Marwa Zein’s documentary Khartoum Offside follows the Sudanese Women’s Football Team as they defy a ban imposed by Sudan’s Islamist military government against women playing soccer—while Zein herself defies the ban against women making movies. The film won Best Documentary at the 2019 Africa Movie Academy Awards, as well as Best Documentary at the Carthage Film Festival (JCC).

Set in South London, Ngozi Onwurah’s Shoot the Messenger (2006)—winner of the Dennis Potter Screenwriting Award and two BAFTA TV Awards—stars David Oyelowo as Joe, a teacher whose life spirals out of control after he is falsely accused of hitting a student and branded a racist by the local Black community. The film features Daniel Kaluuya in one of his breakout roles.

“Art generally reflects our reality and the evolution of our world,” said AFF Executive Director and NYAFF Founder Mahen Bonetti. “While our programs might highlight the challenges Africa faces, they also illuminate her greatness and her vast contribution to our global cultures!”

The festival also includes a shorts program featuring Zein’s A Game, an adaptation of the Italian short story “Let’s Play a Game,” depicting a confrontation between a divorced woman and her young daughter; Onwurah’s Coffee Colored Children, which speaks to the current moment with its story of two siblings of mixed heritage who, faced with racist taunts, try to scrub their blackness away; and Lande Yoosuf’s Love in Submission, in which a meeting between two Black Muslim women brings a big revelation. Sarra Idris’s My Sister, Sara captures Sudanese activist and writer Sara Elhassan in conversation with her brother, ESPN NBA Analyst and TV personality Amin Elhassan, about the 2019 Sudanese revolution and her ongoing activism through social media. Troublemaker, by Olive Nwosu, tells the story of a 10-year-old’s loss of innocence as he hurts his grandfather, reanimating the latter’s traumatic memories of the Biafra War. The program is rounded out by Adé Sultan Sangodoyin’s A Cemetery of Doves, a film about a teenager coming to terms with his sexuality.

This special edition of NYAFF will also showcase a fantastic digital dance piece titled Forever (Brother’s Keeper), choreographed and performed by self-taught Nigerian twins, the Ebinum brothers, in addition to a jam session of catchy Afrobeat tunes spun by the popular DJ mOma at a gorgeous spot in Zanzibar.

This year, AFF is celebrating three decades of promoting African culture through the moving image. Through its signature film festival, traveling series, community engagement programs, outdoor screenings, and new streaming service, the 501(c)(3) brings audiences around the world authentic African cinema from today’s leading and emerging directors, as well as the works of the continent and diaspora’s most esteemed auteurs.

Virtual tickets are $12, and go on sale on Monday, November 23 at noon. See more and save with the NYAFF All-Access Pass for just $60 (a $96 value). Film at Lincoln Center members save an additional 20% on individual rentals and the all-access pass. Learn more at filmlinc.org/AFF2020.

The Programs of AFF are made possible by the generous support of the National Endowment for the Arts, New York State Council on the Arts, NYC Department of Cultural Affairs, Mayor’s Office of Media and Entertainment, Bradley Family Foundation, The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, New York Community Trust, The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Communities of Color Nonprofit Stabilization Fund, Domenico Paulon Foundation, Motion Picture Enterprises, Manhattan Portage, Black Hawk Imports and Royal Air Maroc.

FILMS & DESCRIPTIONS

You Will Die at 20
Amjad Abu Alala, 2020, Sudan/France/Egypt/Germany/Norway/Qatar, 105m
Arabic with English subtitles
Shortly after Muzamil’s birth, the village’s holy man predicts that he will die at age 20. Muzamil’s father can’t stand the curse and leaves home. His mother, the overly protective Sakina, raises her son alone. One day, Muzamil turns 19.

Talking About Trees
Suhaib Gasmelbari, 2019, Sudan/France/Germany/Chad/Qatar, 93m
Arabic and Russian with English subtitles
Ibrahim Shaddad, Manar Al Hilo, Suleiman Mohamed Ibrahim, and Altayeb Mahdi have been filmmakers and friends for more than 45 years. In 1989, they formed the Sudanese Film Group, an independent collective that was suspended soon after its founding when a military coup established an Islamist dictatorship in Sudan. Nearly three decades later, they’ve reunited to resurrect their old dream: to make cinema a reality in Sudan. Talking About Trees chronicles their efforts to revive a defunct movie theater in the city of Omdurman in the face of religious censorship and inefficient bureaucracy.

Khartoum Offside
Marwa Zein, 2019, Sudan/Norway/Denmark, 76m
Arabic with English subtitles
A group of exceptional young women in Khartoum are determined to play football professionally, in spite of the ban imposed by Sudan’s Islamist authorities. In Khartoum Offside, Marwa Zein captures their relentless, fearless, and often humorous struggle to be officially recognized as Sudan’s National Women’s Team. Through her intimate portrait of these women, filmed over a number of years, we witness their hopes, their disappointments, and their unwavering grit.

Two Films by Ibrahim Shaddad (68m)

Human
Ibrahim Shaddad, 1994, Sudan, 27m
In this dialogue-less film distinguished by its innovative use of sound, Shaddad paints a dramatic and powerful portrait of the trials and alienation of a Sudanese villager who moves to a large city.

Hunting Party
Ibrahim Shaddad, 1964, Germany, 41m
German with English subtitles
Made as a graduation project at the German Academy of Film Art in Potsdam-Babelsberg, Shaddad’s seminal film is a Western-inspired treatise on racism. Shot in a forest in Brandenburg, it portrays a white mob’s hunt for a black farmworker.

Kadara
Ade Love (Adeyemi Afolayan), 1980, Nigeria, 94m
Yoruba and Hausa with English subtitles
Tradition dictates that the marriage of the beautiful princess of a kingdom will be decided by a wrestling contest open to all. In Ade Love’s charming, swooning tale, a handsome and endearing farmer and a brutish man of considerable wealth face off for the princess’s hand.

Three Thieves
Udoka Oyeka, 2020, Nigeria, 108m
In this hilarious comedy of mistaken identities, three discontented friends are contracted to commit a seemingly simple theft. But complications arise when a young girl slips into their car, turning their robbery into an unwitting kidnapping.

Shoot the Messenger
Ngozi Onwurah, 2006, UK, 100m
In Onwurah’s provocative tale, David Oyelowo plays Joe, a school teacher in South London who is falsely accused of hitting one of his pupils. As the local Black population turns on him, branding him as a racist, a destitute Joe is forced to confront his fear and hatred of his own community.

Shorts Program: Notes from Home: Part 1

A Game
Marwa Zein, 2010, Egypt/Sudan, 6m
Arabic with English subtitles
In Zein’s adaptation of a short story by the Italian writer Alberto Moravia, a playful game turns into a revelatory confrontation between a divorced single mother and her little daughter.

Coffee Colored Children
Ngozi Onwurah, 1988, Nigeria/UK, 16m
In this lyrical and unsettling film, racist harassment prompts two young mixed-race children to try and whiten their skin with scouring powder. Ngozi Onwurah’s semi-autobiographical testimony to the struggle for self-definition and the internalized effects of bigotry is a powerful catalyst for discussion.

Love in Submission
Lande Yoosuf, 2020, USA, 19m
In the suburbs of central New Jersey, two Black Muslim women from different backgrounds meet for the first time—only to discover that they are bound by an explosive secret.

My Sister, Sara
Sarra Idris, 2020, USA, 30m
English and Arabic with English subtitles
In late 2018 and throughout 2019, Sudan experienced months of protests that ultimately overthrew a 30-year dictatorship. Sara Elhassan was among the young grassroots activists who kept the world informed and connected during this time through social media, helping to mobilize global support for the cause of the Sudanese people. In My Sister, Sara, Elhassan and her older brother Amin, an ESPN sports analyst and TV personality, engage in a candid dialogue on survivor’s guilt, youth movements, and the role of women in the Sudanese revolution.

Troublemaker
Olive Nwosu, 2019, Nigeria, 11m
Igbo with English subtitles
On an excruciatingly hot day in East Nigeria, a young boy learns the hard way that all actions have consequences. Troublemaker is a coming-of-age story about masculinity, violence, and the devastating costs of war across different generations.

A Cemetery of Doves
Adé Sultan Sangodoyin, 2019, Nigeria, 15m
When a teenager’s declaration of love for an older man is met with rejection, he struggles with heartbreak and fear for his safety and future in a society intolerant of the LGBTQ community.

While Mbaye is also responsible for writing the text, the credits do not acknowledge the name of the person speaking it. This documentary urges viewers to reflect on the boundaries between science and history, geography and identity, political context and intellectual research. One of the sons of Cheikh Anta Diop, Mr. Cheikh Mbacké Diop, serves as scientific advisor. Thanks to a plethora of historical material such as photographs, newspaper headlines, and archival footage, Laurence Attali’s editing links the present to the past within a trajectory easy to follow, but also unpredictable enough to keep the viewer’s attention.

Since this documentary is very much a Senegalese project, much attention is devoted to the little-known locations of Cheikh Anta Diop’s early education. We also get an external view of the university in Dakar, dedicated to the famous scholar, whose memory is also preserved through the name of a major avenue running along Cheikh Anta Diop University. On the whole, Mbaye’s biography becomes a journey in space and time that captures the meaningful details of growing up in a state of constant subordination.

Born in 1923, Diop is such a brilliant student that he completes his baccalaureate degree much earlier than his peers, specializing in philosophy and mathematics. In 1946, he enrolls at the Sorbonne where he studies with philosopher of science Gaston Bachelard and anthropologist Marcel Griaule.

A participant in the very first demonstrations against French colonial rule in Africa and Indochina, Diop further specializes in chemistry by working in the prestigious laboratory of Nobel Prize winner Frédéric Joliot-Curie. During the forties and the fifties, chemistry was taught with physics, so Diop translates Einstein’s theory of relativity into the Wolof language of Senegal. Thus, he pioneers an example of cross-cultural dialogue and mutual respect against the French colonial stereotype of the uneducated African.

After multiple rejections of his doctoral thesis, due to its anti-colonial slant, he finally receives his doctoral degree. Book after book, conference after conference, in Dakar and in Cairo, in Guadaloupe and in the United Sates, in Niger and Cameroun, Diop becomes a world-wide, yet controversial celebrity whom UNESCO charges with major responsibilities as far as developing the African intellectual discourse for the rest of the world.

During a 1985 television interview conducted in Atlanta, GA, which Mbaye’s documentary includes in a shortened form, Diop illustrates his Darwinian evolutionary argument. His views underline natural selection, adaptation at the level of skin color, geographical, climatic, and immigration variables. His thesis unfolds according to a few major points.

First, the regions of Egypt, Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania, and South Africa are the cradle of the first six proto-human specimens; second, since these proto-humans appear near or below the Equator, their skin color is characterized by a high content of melanin. In fact, such pigmentation is nature’s way to guarantee protection from the sun. More specifically, the brain mass of the first three specimens is undeveloped, and they eventually disappear. Likewise, the fourth and the fifth specimens do not survive. Only the sixth phenotype is fully human like us, capable of art, thought, and language.

This black Homo sapiens moves out of Africa into Europe. During this stage, the European climate is so cold that the original black pigmentation does not stay on. A skin-color mutation slowly takes place. The concept of race, therefore, emerges much later on, in response to vastly different temperatures and scattered geographical settlements.

Diop is not only an anthropologist and a scientist, but also an Egyptologist, to the extent that he uses Egypt as a linguistic case study to demonstrate etymological similarities between modern Wolof and the ancient hieroglyphs. The title of the documentary, Kemtiyu, means black in ancient Egyptian and in today’s Wolof.

Once he returns to Senegal in 1960, the scientist spends the rest of his life measuring the melanin content of Egyptian mummies. The point of it all is to assess the climatic conditions of Egypt. This region bears witness to the first developments in the exact sciences with the mathematics necessary for the construction of the Pyramids. Diop’s use of the so-called Carbon 14 method proves that the ancient Egyptians had a dark skin coloring.

Carbon 14, or “radio-active dating,” is a method of age determination. It is applicable to the biology of melanin, which also relates to the carbon cycle of plants, animals, and humans. Due to his daring proposition that prehistoric Africa, instead of ancient Greece, witnesses the origins of humankind, Diop battles all his life against Eurocentric arguments. He dies of a heart attack in 1986, possibly provoked by physical exhaustion.

Overall, Mbaye’s documentary demonstrates that Diop’s work is much more complex than it may have seemed previously. In contrast to Aimé Césaire’s and Frantz Fanon’s better-known writings, this interdisciplinary scholar has not received the full attention he deserves in the post-colonial classroom.

Without relying on a celebratory approach, Mbaye leaves enough room for viewers to reflect on their own, as they evaluate interviews conducted with members of the Diop family, friends, colleagues, and one of his opponents, the biological anthropologist Alain Froment. This specialist, at the Musée de l’Homme in Paris, rejects Diop’s arguments and prefers to rely on notions of national and racial purity through biometric evidence.

Whatever the case may be, the fact is that humankind’s origins continue to be a deeply contested topic even today, and nobody knows the whole story for sure. Diop’s worldwide legacy reminds the viewer that science is not always infallible and objective; its conclusions change over time, and research findings can be influenced by cultural biases.

Diop’s story is an example of intellectual courage. Passionate about his topic, he asks new questions by denouncing the ways in which nineteenth- and twentieth-century colonialism still impact European science. Diop’s ideas still struggle for recognition, yet they also inspire new generations of educators and students. One emerges from all the material presented with the distinct feeling that Diop’s contribution deserves reevaluation in light of the most recent anthropological discoveries. Periodically discussed in the media, the origins of humankind are constantly contested, regardless of whether or not they are pigeonholed into racial camps.

Although the overall tone of Mbaye’s documentary is explanatory, one poetic sequence stands out: a large flock of small birds sits in an orderly fashion, like a diligent classroom, on the telephone wires of an urban environment. Later on, we see one vulture flying alone in the sky. Were one to associate this flock of birds with Diop’s disciples today, one would also have to acknowledge that this avian iconography makes its point subtly and effectively. Even if he spends most of his life stretching his wings and flying above the intersection of several disciplines, Diop has many followers who come together and admire his exploration of broader horizons.

In the end, Mbaye’s documentary tells the story of someone who paid a high personal price to rewrite singlehandedly the entire intellectual history of a whole continent. Significantly, the horizontality and stability of Mbaye’s opening long take clashes with the dangerous verticality of Diop’s favorite childhood game. From one of the interviews, the viewer learns that this skinny boy knows how to trap a vulture. Then, after seemingly releasing his prey, he hangs off the bird’s feet for a short thrilling ride in the air. Early on, Diop is an overachiever who has his future path outlined in front of his eyes: he knows he would soar high. Most importantly, he does so above the rules of a game based on oppression, which eventually catches up with him and makes his international career difficult.

Citation: Angela Dalle Vacche, “Review of Kemtiyu, Cheikh Anta,” a documentary directed by Ousmane William Mbaye, African Studies Review, December 2017, Vol. 6, Issue 3, pp. 268-271.

Filmmaker Joseph Gaï Ramaka, who was born in St. Louis, Senegal and lived for many years in Paris, moved to New Orleans, my hometown, in February 2008. He, like thousands of young people from across the United States, was drawn to New Orleans when television stations around the world showed the city under water in September 2005, after the levees broke in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, and thousands of residents scattered, most of them poor and black. Reminiscent of the village of Golema Mmidi in Bessie Head’s 1969 novel, When Rain Clouds Gather, the “new” New Orleans would be held together, not by a shared historical past and extended kin, but because it seemed a place to start anew, to build something, even as its inequalities were as enormous, its resources as limited, as before the “neo-liberal” deluge.² For Ramaka, it was surely also that New Orleans shared history and a French-African métisse culture with his hometown St. Louis, as with the island of Gorée off the coast of Dakar, and an always present river, in our case, the Mississippi.

It was both a privilege and rather daunting challenge to work with Ramaka on an initiative we called The New Orléans Afrikan Film and Arts Festival Project (NOAFEST), a non-profit tax-exempt arts organization. We were Co-Presidents of NOAFEST and Ramaka was, in addition, the Artistic Director. We had met in Dakar in 2002, when he invited his friend, my now deceased husband, Kalidou Sy, former Director of Senegal’s National School of Fine Arts, and myself to dinner at his home in Yoff, on the coast, some miles from downtown Dakar, near Léopold Sédar Senghor airport. 

Wanting to give something to the City that we were perhaps uniquely positioned to give, Ramaka and I launched NOAFEST with personal funds in July of 2008 as a monthly “celebration of film”: new films or recent ones that were not well known to New Orleanians, screened in the presence of filmmakers whenever possible, preceded typically by brief musical performances, followed by rather bountiful receptions, as is the New Orleans way, and lively exchange. As much as possible, we held these events in diverse neighborhoods in the City. Ultimately, we called this program “Cinéma Première.” It was not long before this idea crystallized: Africa and communities of African descent were not the limit of our horizon but, rather, a point of departure “from which we open ourselves to the world.” While our events may have had particular resonance for African American and other minority communities, we sought to build communication across the diverse communities of the city, connecting New Orleanians of all types to the world and one another. Our public was from the beginning multi-racial and multi-generational, including people of differing educational and socio-economic backgrounds, encompassing the diversity of New Orleans, yet united by the desire to enjoy powerful artistic experiences and committed to equality across the board. We were able to sustain this project through 2012. 

As in filmmaking, one of NOAFEST’s biggest challenges was the constant hustle for money. We did not charge admission. But thanks to a small, dedicated staff of volunteers, in-kind contributions from Whole Foods, participation by Molto, a chamber orchestra founded by Haitian composer and conductor Jean Montès, financial donations, and a range of grants over the years from the French General Consulate, the Arts Council of New Orleans, the Jazz & Heritage Foundation, the Mayor’s Office, the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities, the City Council-Harrah’s Community Partners Program, and the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, NOAFEST grew and developed a small annual film festival, very similar in its contours to Cinéma Première, and, ultimately, an annual award, the Toni Cade Bambara Award for Cultural Leadership, given to cultural or artistic workers in the city who helped promote artistic diversity, cultural memory and whose work was significant in building and transforming community.³ The Toni Cade Bambara Award highlighted the importance of social justice as a fundamental aspect of our project. Moreover, NOAFEST traditionally incorporated into the festival schedule one or more talks, interviews or roundtables focusing on questions of race, power, and social justice.

In 2010-11, we relocated Cinéma Première from its first home base, in uptown New Orleans at the Prytania theatre, to Café Rose Nicaud⁴ in the Marigny on Frenchmen Street, next door to the famous jazz nightclub, Snug Harbor. Ramaka scouted out locations as well as films, and this particular location struck a chord. It’s not clear whether he saw this coming or whether it came to him later, but he said to me one day with great enthusiasm, “we can project the film inside the Café and outdoors across the street.” 

It seemed like a good idea, but perhaps he himself did not realize at first what a good idea “Cinéma Première Inside/Outside,” as we called it, was. Inside, the Café Rose Nicaud was a small intimate space, cozy, ripe for discussion and intellectual exchange. Outside, on the wall across the street facing the café, the film was writ large. Passersby on Frenchmen, one of the most popular streets in New Orleans for young people and tourists, were going about their business, when all of sudden, out of nowhere, they were startled and then mesmerized by the images on the wall. They then sat down at café tables outdoors or on the sidewalk itself. Outside was spectacle in the modern (or post-modern) space of the city: the near-anonymity, the energy, sense of possibility, alternatives, and yearnings that we associate with urban space. Needless to say, the filmmakers who joined us monthly were thrilled to see their work as part of the cityscape, calling out to people who went by. 

This work was not unrelated to the content and the form of Ramaka’s work as a filmmaker. “Inside/Outside” is where Ramaka, in my view, situates himself. Straddling spaces, exploiting multiple options. Intimate and spectacular. All at once. So it was that Ramaka stood astride the worlds of New Orleans and Dakar, he went back and forth between documentary and narrative films, and he negotiated the tension between rêverie (a world of dream) and an often bruising real, in other words, beauty and the beast. Beauty–because every scene is poetic–even those that bring to life the ugly beast of power. 

Both documentary and narrative films under Ramaka’s pen and camera, then, share techniques and preoccupations. Both are marked, on the one hand, by a certain yearning, a lyricism and beauty in music, composition and images and, on the other, by an explicit or implicit social critique of the beast of arrogance and power–or its opposite, an exploration of love. An example among Ramaka’s documentaries is the beautiful short film, Plan Jaxaay! (The Jaxaay Plan, 2007), which denounces the false promises, manipulation, and inaction of the Senegalese government vis-à-vis flooded Dakar suburbs where residents use trash as filler upon which to build their homes. These same suburbs are marred by overcrowding, poverty, and inadequate sanitation. In Plan Jaxaay!, Ramaka strolls through these neighborhoods with a camera, observing and listening. 

Ramaka’s best known narrative film is the award-winning Karmen Gei (2001), inspired by the Bizet opera, Carmen (1875), itself an adaptation of Prosper Mérimée’s Romantic novella (1845) of the same name. In Ramaka’s film the articulation of freedom has been reterritorialized in the magical and chaotic urbanity of Dakar and the island of Gorée. Karmen has a strong undercurrent of social critique but seems little concerned with correcting misrepresentations of Africa and asserting the “True” or the “Authentic.” 

Karmen’s intertextual origins, its many ambiguities, and musical métissage–a jazz score by David Murray, a requiem composed by Dakarois Julien Djouga and rehearsed under his direction by a Catholic choir, a Mouride chant sung by El Hadji Ndiaye, traditional drumming, a “praise song” to Karmen by Yandé Codou Sène and still other musical forms– signal the film’s distinction: its refusal of pieties, of status quo’s, of compartments, be they musical, narrative, religious, or gender. The musical and textual formal interweaving matches the heroine’s spirit of freedom, her refusal to be bound by convention. This resonates, of course, with what seems to me the complex graphic quality of the film, in which the sea–given the denunciation of a corrupt, bourgeois social order on land—represents a space of freedom, of play, of repose. Even in the women’s prison on the island of Gorée, effects of lighting, color and music transform a dark space—which could symbolize entrapment and psychological alienation–into a magical, intimate frame where women dance, love, are vigorous and powerful among themselves.⁵ 

Fully committed to filmmaking, Ramaka has always seemed to be nonetheless a poet with a camera, who prefers the moment of full creative possibility which is writing to cinematic execution which entails a struggle with the constraints and limitations of reality. If, as he once put it, “cinema is a place where everything is possible. . . . where one can stop the sun from setting, if one wishes” (Martin 205), it is in fact more properly the space of writing itself where anything and everything is imaginable, where yearning and desire are free. In the actual filmmaking one is entangled materially, in the snares of time, equipment, money, weather, contracts, permits and personalities. 

In my view, it is this constant awareness of beauty, lyricism and desire, on the one hand, and beastliness and limits, on the other, that gives this cinema its potency, its capacity to draw spectators into the drama carried by music, sound and visuals and to provoke deep emotional responses even in Ramaka’s films of harsh social critique. 

So it is with Mbas mi (2020), a short film in Wolof with English subtitles that the New York African Film Festival has chosen to screen during this year’s online festival. The Senegalese actor Goo Mamadou Bâ chants in Wolof an excerpt from Albert Camus’s The Plague (La peste, 1947), the story of the Bubonic plague, set in mid-twentieth century, that comes mysteriously to life in the city of Oran (Algeria) and, eventually, departs just as mysteriously, leaving in its 

wake, along with the dead, metaphysical, existential questions about life. Produced some 2350 miles southwest of Oran, on the island of Gorée, Mbas mi is a film of its time, resonating deeply in these days of COVID-19. Ramaka manages a certain cinematic wizardry reminiscent of his claim that in cinema…”one can stop the sun from setting, if one wishes.” 

This brings us to his reflections on the creative process with which this article begins: The mobius strip in which inside and outside are one and the same reality. Sounding one’s intuition, engaging one’s uncertainties. Realizing that every reading is partial. Then beginning again…

References 

Head, Bessie. When Rain Clouds Gather. Bantam Books. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1968. 

Johnson, Cedric. Ed. The Neo-Liberal Deluge: Hurricane Katrina Late Capitalism, and the Remaking of New Orleans (Minneapolis: U Minnesota Press, 2011). 

Maasilta, Mari. African Carmen: Trasnational Cinema as an Arena for Cultural Contradictions. Tampere, Finland: Tampere U Press, 2007. 

Martin, Michael T. “Joseph Gaï Ramaka: ‘I am not a filmmaker engagé. I am an ordinary citizen engagé.” Research in African Literatures 40.3 (2009): 204-217. 

Mitchell, Elvis. “Driving Men, and Women, Crazy.“ New York Times. April 2002. 

Prabhu, Anjali. The ‘Monumental’ Heroine: Female Agency in Joseph Gaï Ramaka’s Karmen Geï.“ Cinema Journal 51.4 (summer 2012): 66-86. 

Ramaka, Joseph Gaï. Karmen Geï. 2001. Distr. California Newsreel. 

_____. Plan Jaxaay! 2007. Liberté I. 

NOTES 

¹ Personal communication, March 2011. My translation. 

² For an insightful discussion of Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath as an effect of neo-liberal policies, see Cedric Johnson, ed. The Neo-Liberal Deluge: Hurricane Katrina Late Capitalism, and the Remaking of New Orleans. 

³ This annual award, including cash and a work of art, was named for the prolific writer, Toni Cade Bambara (1939-1995), a practicing artist, educator, feminist and community activist. Author of The Salt Eaters (1980) and the posthumous Those Bones are not My Child (1999), Bambara once said that she never thought of herself as a writer but as a community person who “writes and does a few other things.” In 2010, NOAFEST honored two beloved yet unsung heroines, Vera Warren-Williams and Jennifer Turner, owner and manager of the Community Book Center, which had served the New Orleans community for 27 years. Toni Cade Bambara’s daughter presented the honorees with a sculpture by a Zimbabwean artist, Two Sisters, and a message of congratulations from Toni Morrison was read. An innovative chamber music ensemble offered their funky rendition of a classic by Nigerian musician, Fela Ransome-Kuti, and celebrated Nigerian poet and Professor of English at the University of New Orleans, Dr. Niyi Osundare, read a poem in honor of the 2010 awardees. In 2011, the second award, including the sculpture, Tree of Music, by Senegalese artist André Guibril Diop was presented to the legendary musician, teacher and entrepreneur, Harold Battiste, Jr. In 2012, the Toni Cade Bambara award was presented to the mesmerizing spoken word artist and activist, Sunni Patterson. 

⁴ According to the Café’s website: “In the early 1800’s Rose Nicaud became the first known coffee vendor in New Orleans. Rose, a slave, saw the opportunity to provide a service to French Market vendors, workers and shoppers by providing them with fresh, hot coffee. Rose created a portable cart which she pushed through the market on Sundays, selling “cafe noir ou cafe au lait”. Her entrepreneurial efforts were a quick success. One customer is quoted to have said, “Her coffee is like the benediction that follows after prayer”. 

It is likely that Rose provided the majority of her earnings from the day’s sales to her owner, as this was the typical arrangement. She saved the portion she was allowed to keep until she had enough to buy her freedom. Rose’s earliest customers stood next to her cart to drink their coffee. Later, she created a permanent stand in the Market, and her customers were provided with seating. Rose’s success inspired dozens of other women of color, who sold coffee from small portable stands. 

In the 19th and early 20th century, many resourceful women of color in New Orleans made their living and supported their families by selling coffee, pralines, calas and other food and drink in the French Market and on the streets of the city’s old neighborhoods. They were known as Les Vendeuses.” <www.caferosenicaud.com>

⁵ For further reading on Karmen Gei, see Mari Maasilta, Michael T. Martin, Elvis Mitchell, and Anjali Prabhu in the list of References.  

Distribution remains one of the main challenges facing African cinema. Reaching domestic and international audiences is difficult despite the promise of digital technological innovations over the last fifteen years. In fact, scholarship on African film distribution in the United States is currently scarce and limited to a few contributions in articles. These articles have included “African Cinema in the American Video Market” by Cornelius Moore (1992); “La construction identitaire par le cinéma: diaspora africaine aux États-Unis” by Boukary Sawadogo (2017); “Evolving Nollywood Templates for Minor Transnational Film” by Moradewun Adejunmobi (2014); and Nollywood: The Creation of Nigerian Film Genres a monograph by Jonathan Haynes (2016). Yet, the distribution of African films in the United States should be the subject of more sustained scholarly attention, as the market is expanding with diverse African diasporic communities increasing in the country that is home to Hollywood. African films are distributed in North America through four channels: the festival circuit; independent distributors; informal circuits (pirated copies of DVDs sold in subway stations and African stores); and online platforms (Amazon, Netflix, YouTube, Vimeo, irokoTV, etc.). African cinema has to cultivate a niche in a market that is not only dominated by Hollywood big budget productions, but also where other films from around the world compete for visibility.

THE ARGUMENT

In discussing film as art or business, Bordwell and Thompson (2013) note that, eighty percent of the world’s distribution circuits are dominated by Hollywood companies such as Warner Bros., Universal, Columbia, Twentieth Century Fox, and Paramount (p. 34). Concretely, this means that a movie that is not (co)produced with one of those Hollywood companies faces an uphill battle in terms of international distribution through theatrical releases. However, Hollywood studios’ dominant position in distribution is challenged by the expanding reach of online distribution platforms and “the multiplication of screens” (Barlet 2016, p. 344), with portable electronic devices currently shaping how images are consumed. For other cinematic traditions and practices such as Bollywood and Nollywood, their popular and commercial success hinges not only on the domestic market but also on the international audience. In this regard, Nollywood has developed several trans-nationalisation initiatives such as Nollywood Week in Paris, launched in 2013, cable and satellite broadcasting on M-NET’s Africa Magic channel, and the Filmmakers Association of Nigeria, USA, a project intended to organise the American market and encourage crossover projects (Haynes 2016, p. 237). A deeper reflection on the distribution of African cinema in the United States is needed to help locate opportunities for consolidation and growth, considering the large African diaspora living in the country and consuming audio-visual content from Africa (Sawadogo 2017, p. 89). In addition, the multiplication of screens offers US-based academics alternate lines of inquiry in their production of scholarship on African cinema, which African audio-visual professionals could also use as a marketing tool in targeting American consumers.

In his article entitled “African Cinema in the American Video Market”, Cornelius Moore (1992) interrogates the place of African cinema in the United States by asking:

How can one of the least known and most under-funded cinemas in the world, African cinema, find a place in the most lavishly promoted and capitalized media marketplaces on earth, the US feature film market? (p. 38)

A quarter of a century later, I would like to pose the same question again regarding the accessibility to African films. In an attempt to answer this interrogation, I assess the current state of African film distribution in the United States, focusing on the festival and academic circuits as the two main channels, and offer a prospective analysis of how streaming and downloading platforms will shape access to African movies. Given the relative dearth of scholarship on African film distribution in the United States, I hope this assessment will offer African audio-visual professionals and interested parties some insights into the US market.

In her book Curating Africa in the Age of Film Festivals, Lindiwe Dovey (2015) examines African film festivals as a distribution channel for the continents productions within the larger context of the global market. In addition to the historical and contextual background, Dovey’s (2015) study rests on the dichotomy between African film festivals in Africa, such as Journées Cinénamatogrpahiques de Carthage and Fespaco (p. 95), and those regularly held in Europe and North America, including Festival des trois continents, New York African Film Festival, and Vues d’Afrique (p. 111). Despite the emergence of local festivals in West Africa within the last fifteen years such as Festival du Film Documentaire de Blitta (Togo), Festival International du Film de Ouidah (Benin), Festival de Film Ciné Droit Libre (Burkina Faso), and Gorée Cinéma Festival (Senegal), the Western-based African film festivals still retain an overwhelming power of attraction for many filmmakers. Internet-based film festivals currently being experimented with in the West are still embryonic on the continent because of infrastructural constraints, particularly connectivity and data issues with regard to streaming and downloading.

On the other hand, the greater appeal of African film festivals in the global North may be attributed to the desire for international exposure outside the continent and the increasingly transnational nature of the working and living spaces of these filmmakers. As most of the funding sources are located in Europe and North America, the festival circuit represents a channel for international recognition that filmmakers hope to translate into distribution contracts for DVD releases, and that offers networking opportunities for the funding of future projects. In contrast to the second generation of African filmmakers such as Mali’s Souleymane Cissé or Burkina Faso’s Idrissa Ouédraogo, who live and work on the continent, the contemporary generation of directors operates literally and figuratively in trans-national spaces, as is the case for Abderrhamane Sissako, Jean-Pierre Bekolo, Jean-Marie Teno, Mahamat Saleh Haroun, Dani Kouyaté, and Alain Gomis. As they live and work between Africa, Europe and America, participation at independent festivals dedicated to African or world cinema is perceived as an expression or extension of their ‘transnationality’.

As for the festival circuit, independent and Black film festivals constitute the main gateways to the American market for African filmmakers. Other informal distribution channels for African films in the United States are
predominantly geared toward the diaspora (Haynes 2016, p. 238). However, I have opted not to focus on them because of the lack of reliable data on their reception despite their contributing undeniably to the dissemination of African films to a diverse spectatorship. African films are regularly screened at independent festivals such as Sundance Film Festival (Sawadogo [2017] ‘Africa at Sundance 2014’), New York African Film Festival, Tribeca Film Festival, Ann Arbour Film Festival, Chicago International Film Festival, and African Diaspora International Film Festival. Because of the international scope of their line-up and the mission to promote independent productions, independent festivals have proven to be hospitable terrain for enhancing the visibility of African films. In addition to independent festivals, Black film festivals or festivals devoted to Black cinema have also served as a promotional vehicle for African films entering the US market. In fact, the lines between independent and Black film festivals are often blurred, as is for instance in the case of the New York African Film Festival, Image Nation, Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) African Festival, New Voices in Black Cinema, and Africa World Documentary Film Festival.

There is an apparent contradiction between African directors’ reliance on the niche of Black cinema festivals as entry points into the US market and their efforts to be identified as filmmakers in the broadest sense rather than being ghettoised in the African or Black categories at festivals. This apparent contradiction points to the larger issue of defining the global positionality of African cinema within world or international mainstream cinema. In this regard, academics have to (re)imagine new global analytical frameworks to study African cinema beyond those of ‘Third Cinema’ and black transnational cultural movements such as decolonisation, black arts movement or British black arts movement.

In addition to the festival circuit, academe represents another major diffusion channel through the teaching and scholarship of US-based African film scholars. As Adejunmobi (2016, p. 127) observes, “In the United States, one is more likely to find one scholar or two working on Africa in departments of history, anthropology, and literature (English, French, Portuguese, and Comparative Literature).” However, Adejunmobi (2016) is quick to highlight the small number of Africa scholars working in media-related departments (p. 128). Their teaching and research interests ensure a continued academic investigation of African cultural expressions, including cinema. In this regard, African directors are regularly invited to campuses and meetings of professional organisations such as the African Studies Association (ASA) and the African Literature Association (ALA) for screening and discussion of their works. For the filmmakers, invitations to US campuses and professional organisations represent recognition but also a means for promotion outside the festival circuit. Examples range from the pioneering figure Sembene Ousmane to contemporary filmmakers such as Jean-Pierre Bekolo, Jean-Marie Teno, Joseph Gaï Ramaka, Wanuri Kahiu, and Fanta Regina Nacro.

For purposes of teaching and research, scholars rely on DVD releases of African films by independent distributors, of which California Newsreel has been a main actor for a long time until recently, when its Library of African Cinema project ceased acquiring new titles. East coast independent distributors such as ArtMattan, Women Make Movies, Kino, Icarus, Milestone, and Documentary Educational Resources also have a longstanding tradition of serving the academic market by releasing African films on DVDs. However, a close examination of catalogue offerings on their websites show that each of these independent distributors acquires on average three or four African titles per year. In addition, the interests of the distributors do not always coincide with the filmmakers’, as they first tend to acquire only films that are likely to make profit while the latter would want all their productions to be made available to the largest audience in possibly different formats. Thus, an argument can be made about the limited significance of the impact of these DVD releases by academic oriented independent distributors on the larger issue of distribution facing the African cinema. Nevertheless, the role of interface played by these distributors should not be dismissed, especially in a context where the academic market is not growing fast enough and university libraries are facing budget cuts. As such, new distribution platforms and channels need to be explored to harness fully the potential spectatorship among the Black diaspora and other niches in the United States. Reaching this potential spectatorship will not only bridge the Atlantic divide between African and diasporaic audio-visual storytellers by creating opportunities of collaboration but will also expose African cinema to a much broader audience worldwide. The resulting increased visibility and integration into mainstream cinema might offer solutions to the perennial funding and distribution challenges facing Africa’s mostly independent filmmakers.

It is my contention that connectivity should guide African cinema’s distribution, particularly in the current context of increasingly digital modes of production and online channels. The distribution landscape in the United States has seen the emergence of streaming platforms such as Netflix, Amazon video, Hulu, Vimeo, YouTube, Video on Demand on cable channels, Kanopy, Docuseek2, and African Network Television. These streaming platforms target both the public and the academic market. The streaming channels offer unparalleled competitiveness because African movies can be on multiple platforms, accessible from anywhere in the world. In fact, a quick YouTube search on African films yields a sizeable list of movies available for free streaming, though some of them are illegal posts.

This constitutes a start in the appropriation process of online distribution but there must be a movement for a significant change to happen. Contrary to the infrastructural constraints in Africa, the United States offers relatively conducive technical conditions for setting up the platforms, leaving the question of accessibility on the continent unresolved. In this regard, a downloading platform may be more compatible with Africa’s current situation because streaming would require uninterrupted, high bandwidth connections that are not presently available in many locations on the continent. The emerging online distribution platforms channels could potentially cause changes in filmmaking practices, including the length of creative works (short films and serialization of productions). Other changes concern how African filmmakers should be better equipped legally to address copyrights issues that are likely to arise. By definition, distribution of cultural products is about ceding rights over one’s work for a given amount of time and within agreed territorial boundaries. Online distribution, by its inherently global nature, raises issues of distribution rights and contracts.

In conclusion, from the Rockefeller Foundation’s launch of the National Video Resources (NVR) initiative in 1990, which initially funded the Library of African Cinema project at California Newsreel (Moore 1992, p. 39), to the distribution today of African titles by a small number of independent distributors, African cinema is still on the margins in the United States. Internet-based distribution has benefits for a minor cinema like the African moving image arts to gain more visibility in the context of an industry dominated by Hollywood, but it is not a panacea for the complex issue of African cinema distribution. African filmmakers will need to pool their resources by, for example, setting up joint ventures or collaborating on the most cost-effective distribution framework to promote their films. As online distribution platforms continue to expand in numbers and reach, African audio-visual professionals will greatly benefit from further research on viewership, reception and distribution to better position themselves in an increasingly global digital market. Therefore, the research on global distribution networks will not only aid African producers and directors in devising effective marketing strategies but will also produce knowledge that contributes to a better understanding of complex issues such as identity affirmation, cultural politics, and the economics of global circulation of images.

REFERENCES

Adejunmobi, M. (2016). African media studies and marginality at the center. Black Camera, 7 (2), 125-139.
Adejunmobi, M. (2014). Evolving Nollywood templates for minor transnational film. Black Camera, 5(2), 74-94.
Barlet, O. (2013). Contemporary African cinema. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press.
Bordwell, D. & Thompson, K. (2013). Film Art: An Introduction, 10th Ed. New York: McGraw-Hill.
Bordwell, D. (2000). Planet Hong Kong: Popular cinema and the art of entertainment. Cambridge, London: Harvard University Press.
Dovey, L. (2015). Curating Africa in the age of film festivals. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Haynes, J. (2016). Nollywood: The creation of Nigerian film genres. Chicago: Chicago University Press.
Moore, C. (1992). African cinema in the American video market. Issue: A Journal of Opinion, 20 (2), 38-41. Sawadogo, B. (2017). La construction identitaire par le cinéma: Diaspora africaine aux États-Unis. CinémAction, 163, 89-95. Solanas, F. & Getino, O. (1970-1971). Toward a Third Cinema. Cinéaste, 4(3), 1-10.

Originally published in Sanaa Journal, Volume 2, Issue 1

Fouad Kargbo – Participant and Program Manager

The cultural Conservation Program (SLCCP) has been the only organization in Sierra Leone ever, since 2011, to document and digitalize the cultural heritage of the country, ranging from artifacts, dress codes, music, medicine and so on, for research and touristic purposes.

Working on the project has been an enlightening end educative experience. We had participants that were trained on different media ethics and equipped with the knowledge of acquiring information and digitalizing them for research and archiving. Lots of information was gathered in the first phase that made the project a success and a potential for economic and cultural benefit to the country. Since the first phase was a pilot, it achieved more than expected and could do way better if given a second phase, based on experiences learned.

Being hired as a Program Assistant, I had very fresh and positive ideas that were continuously shared with my bosses for the improvement of delivery since I come from youth activism and have years of experience working with children and youths. Though my recommendations were not heard, the project was slow to achieve its full potential and delivery. I believe that with time, we can learn to understand our strengths and weaknesses for future implementation.

MUSA ISLAM KAMARA – Participant

It was an opportunity and a great experience to be part of such training, I was a complete novice by then in terms of camera operations, editing, developing a concept for documentary etc. After that first phase, now I have very good knowledge on the mentioned areas.

Before then, I was just interested in becoming a camera operator, after sometimes during the training, my focus tends to be shifted into more of documentary stuff. Although there were some problems along the process, especially in terms of adequacy of equipment and facilitations when it was time to go out on exercise. Normally the facilitators used to divide us into two groups; of course some people always relax when its group work.

I was expecting a continuation or a second phase of that training and with the provision of start upkits/equipment, especially when we were asked to present individual project topics.

Thanks to the facilitators and sponsors of that project, especially for the launch and transport support, it makes participants to be more focused and concentrated on the course as we used to be in class from 4pm onto 8, 9pm.

Gloria O.R. Yaskey – Program Offer / Research Assistant 

During my tenure as Program Officer and Research Assistant 2 at the Sierra Leone Cultural Conservation Program (SLCCP), I directly supervised the activities of the kids (beneficiaries) who were assigned to me to ensure that they actively participate and exhibit knowledge and skills acquired from training sessions. Below are highlighted impacts of the Project (Sierra Leone Cultural Conservation Program) on the beneficiaries and on me while serving as Program Officer and Research Assistant 2.

Impact of SLCCP on me as Program Officer/ Research Assistant:

• Learn a lot dealing with large number of kids from difference backgrounds
• Learnt and had adequate knowledge on operating video cameras and digital equipment’s
• Learnt how to develop and produce short documentaries
• Meet people from different facets
• Learnt a lot on Project Management and execution
• Was taught on the processes and techniques / skills in creating Audio and video libraries for the project
• Was also taught how to use video editing softwares

Impact of SLCCP on beneficiaries:

• Beneficiaries were taught how to operate, direct and produce documentaries
• They were also taught of interview skills
• Also, beneficiaries were taught how to operate all digital equipment’s including cameras, recorders etc.
• Was also taught how to use video editing softwares, during their TV and Film production session
• Beneficiaries were taught on being  creative
• Beneficiaries were also given the opportunity to meet with different Actors / Actresses / TV, Radio and Newspaper Icons
• They were taught on health and hygiene practices
• They were taught on writing narratives (stories)
• They were also taught on telling their own stories from their perspective

Participant Career Updates:

Currently Searching for Employment: Patricia, Islam, Christiana and Salim
Valona Taylor – Digital/Graphics – Africa Young Voices Media Empire (TV), Freetown, SierraLeone
Millicent Kargbo – Communications Officer, National Youth Commission, Freetown, Sierra Leone
Gloria Yaskey – Program Officer, Kids Educational Engagement Project, Monrovia, Liberia
Fouad Kargbo – Sierra Leone Film Council
Jongopie Cole – Primary SchoolTeacher, Freetown, Sierra Leone
Sinneh Sesay – Camera Operator–Africa Young Voices Media Empire, Freetown, Sierra Leone
Kabbah – Camera Operator/Photographer – Associated Press
Arnold – Freelance photographer, Freetown, Sierra Leone
Aminata Drynie Bockarie – Sierra Leone Film Council

In Grace, a story of the spiritual journey of individuals to the promised land, an angelic figure, the mother goddess, takes center stage in white flowing fabric. Her bandeau top has a chiffon overlay that serves as a kind of shield, even as it reminds us of lingerie. A dozen other dancers, clad in loose white pants made fluid with motion, move opposite earthly opponents clad in fire red. Grace is one of the most popular works in the repertory of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater. Much of the power of the performance, which was commissioned in 1999, comes from the choreography of Ronald K. Brown, a soundtrack that includes Fela Kuti’s “Shakara” and Duke Ellington’s “Come Sunday,” and the expertise of the dancers. But the costumes are equally potent in telling the story.

The costumes are the work of Ibiwunmi Omotayo Olaiya, better known as Wunmi, a singer, songwriter, performer, and fashion designer. Born in London and raised in Lagos, Nigeria, the 54-year-old, who now lives in Brooklyn, sees dress and style as integral to identity. From an early age, she learned the transformative power of art, be it music, dance, or dress. “My parents were working and living in London, so I grew up with my nan [grandmother] in Lagos, but very much on my own,” she remembers. “I created my own world of pretend, of dress-up. I was dressing my own love and need. This became a way of being.” That ethos – of clothing as a crucial element of sound, of movement, and of life – has remained a constant in her creative career.

At 14, Wunmi returned to London to live with her dad, who ran a pretty strict household. She found her creative outlet in dance and style. “Dressing was a way to create my own identity,” she says. “I wore weird, different outfits, and I sewed my own clothes.” At the time, she didn’t think of pursuing design professionally – “I was creating myself” she says – but teachers took notice of her talents and persuaded her to attend the London College of Fashion.

While in college in the 1980s, Wunmi started her first fashion line, Revolution With Love, with her best friend Donovan Pascal. The line featured one-of-a-kind jackets made from prayer rugs. Adopting unusual materials would come to define her design aesthetic, and the label reaffirmed her individualism with its slogan “This is me.” At the same time, she was performing as a singer and dancer with the exploding UK house-music scene, wearing her own uniquely styled and tailored outfits. She danced with the band Soul II Soul and was featured as a silhouette in the video for the 1989 hit “Back to Life.” The success brought another dramatic change; when the band went to New York City that year, she went along.

In New York, Wunmi’s music was heavily influenced by Afrobeat and particularly by Fela Kuti, a pioneer in the genre. Wunmi helped introduce those elements to the city’s sound. Popular musicians began sampling her demos, and she became a fixture in the creative community. Her design work dovetailed with the music; she started working with influential choreographers and dance companies. Marlies Yearby, choreographer for Rent, became a mentor and introduced her to Brown, who offered Wunmi a place to stay in exchange for designing costumes for his dance company, Evidence.

Thus began a collaboration that has continued for more than 20 years. In addition to Grace, Wunmi has designed for the sequel Serving Nia (2001); Dancing Spirit (2009), Brown’s tribute to Ailey dancer and artistic director Judith Jamison; and Four Corners (2013), a story of four angels holding the four winds. She shapes her style to the demands of the performance. For Four Corners, “Ron situated the dance in that pre-dawn time where it’s an early-morning haze,” Wunmi says, so she created custom-dyed fabrics in rich purples, deep grays, and black.

Wunmi’s latest collaboration is with six-time Grammy winner Arturo O’Farrill & the Afro Latin Jazz Orchestra. As part of a four-month artist-in-residence program at the Greene Space in New York City, O’Farrill and his band paid tribute to Fela Kuti, with Wunmi featured as a guest artist. In addition to performing, she designed the costumes – taking oceanic inspiration, fish scales and deep, rich hues – for the entire band and for her backup singers. What might have been a stressful undertaking was, for Wunmi, a relief. “I didn’t know what my girls would wear until the day of the show,” she says, “but sewing calms my nerves.”

In 2012, Wunmi started another apparel line called Wow Wow. The clothes are primarily made in Nigeria, where she works closely with textile artisans and tailors to create heirloom-quality pieces for men, women, and children, providing mentorship, jobs, and new markets for the community. As ever, Wunmi had performance in mind. “The same things I created on stage were lived off stage,” she says. “My fellow dancers asked for my creations, and a collection was formed.” The name has layered meaning. It refers to waaw in the Wolof language, meaning “yes-yes” and also translates as the motto for the line “want it – own it – wear it, Wunmi Olaiya Wear.”

Empowering women and celebrating the individual are key components of the brand. “Every family event in Nigeria was something to celebrate. Women dress uniformly as a way to express solidarity,” Wunmi notes. “However, I want women to express their individuality in Wow Wow. Owning a piece of Wow shares that vibrancy. It’s your version of your personal ‘wow.’ ” The company creates cloth using adire, a resist-dyeing technique primarily from Nigeria (Wunmi’s design aesthetic is a fusion of Japanese and African, she says) while the colors – bright hues often mixed with indigo – recall the fruits and textile patterns of an African market.

Wunmi’s current project revisits Brown’s Grace for its 20th anniversary presentation and includes a new complementary dance, Mercy. For the latter piece, Brown collaborated with a range of musicians, including bassist and singer Meshell Ndegeocello, to perform Ndegeocello’s original score.

Wunmi called on science fiction and Afropunk for her designs, turning to Octavia Butler’s novels Kindred and Wild Seed for inspiration. The novels have prompted questions that can be read as the guiding principles of Wunmi’s creative life: “Where did we come from? Where do we go from here? What will we make of the new space?”

As for the future, Wunmi aspires to extend her collaborations beyond choreographers and musicians to artisans from a variety of practices including furniture and interior design, green accessories, and architecture. Her goal is to build on what was once perceived as “local” craft to grow Wow Wow into a global brand.

Originally published in the August/September 2019 issue of American Craft Magazine.

During sessions, students watched and discussed the structures of various short African films and learned about the various roles that contribute to a film production. Later, students collaboratively created a story which centered around the subject of immigration and social equality. Students took on different crew (including directing, photography direction and production management) and main acting roles and collaborated with fellow students who took on roles as extras.

The session culminated in a screening of the final production at East Harlem School, with students, teachers, family and AFF staff members in attendance. View the photos from the workshop and the final production below!

The second concern is alluded to in the statement by Ramaka that “…my concerns are not as a filmmaker, but rather as a citizen who happens to be a filmmaker.” In contrast to received views, this statement suggests that artists, like citizens, should deploy their resources and talent on behalf of the common good and intervene in the process of democratization.

Ramaka’s theorized stance is certainly not without precedence as he references Marx and the anticolonial texts of Frantz Fanon and Aimé Césaire. His views about the documentary—as a means of social and political intervention “against injustice”—are aligned, although less schematically, with the theorist-filmmakers of the New Latin American Cinema who situated film, especially the documentary, in larger national/continental projects for change. In Ramaka’s documentary Plan Jaaxay! (2007), on the intolerable plight of a flooded Dakar suburb exemplifies this mode of documentary practice.

A [“citizen”] filmmaker whose body of work is modest, yet timely and provocative, Ramaka was born in Saint-Louis, Senegal. Following studies in visual anthropology (Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales) and cinema (Haute Etudes Cinématographiques) in Paris, he established in France the production and distribution company, The Ark Studios (Les Ateliers de L’Arche) in 1990. With Ghaël Samb Sall in 1997, he developed Les Ateliers de L’Arche—Dakar, and, the following year, L’Espace Bel’Arte. During this period (1990–97), Ramaka wrote screenplays, including Karmen—a modern adaptation of Bizet’s opera Carmen set in contemporary Senegal—which he produced and screened at several festivals including the 54th edition of the Cannes Festival in 2001 and the following year at the Pan African Film and Arts Festival (Los Angeles), where it received the Best Feature Award. Among his documentary films, So Be It (Ainsi soit-it) was awarded the Lion d’Argent at the 54th Mostra Internationale d’Arte. Cinematographica of Venice in 1997 and And What if Latif Was Right? (Et si Latif avait raison!) was awarded Best Documentary Film at the Festival Vues D’Afriques (Montreal) in 2006.

Presently, Ramaka resides in New Orleans.

The interview was conducted by Michael T. Martin and occurred on March 5, 2008, during Ramaka’s visit to IU-Bloomington.

MM: What influenced you to become a filmmaker?

JR: Two people influenced me. The first was a grandfather to whom I performed shadow shows. He was my sole audience and happy when I would tell him a story about the shadows. The second was the blues and jazz singer Nina Simone. Her songs evoked the need in me to express myself.

MM: Do you have an approach to storytelling?

JR: First, I work a lot on the text which takes most of my time. What nourishes me, though, is a vision of life that has its source in Africa. The mental disposition from which I write is a “surrealist” understanding of the world. This way of seeing the world pre-dates the more recent concept in Europe. It’s a way of thinking about the world that, for example, is illustrated in the text Leuk the Rabbit [Leuk et le lièvre by Abdoulaye Sadji and Léopold Sédar Senghor] or in Emmanuel Dongala’s Jazz and Palm Wine. I believe that in Africa surrealism is a way not only of thinking about the world but projecting oneself onto it. This way of thinking completely liberates you. Everything is possible when you start from this point of view. So, it’s not only a vision of the world as it is but opens up a possible way of transforming it. The weakness of those who are leading Africa is that they don’t think of this way of transforming the continent. This replaces ideology. And the link between this way of thinking and cinema is quite natural because cinema is a place where everything is possible. Cinema is a place where one can stop the sun from setting, if one wishes.

MM: Why did you create in 1990 the production and distribution group in Les Ateliers de L’Arche [The Ark Studios]?

JR: From the start, I wanted to be independent. Les Ateliers de L’Arche was for me a way not to be dependent. Dependency is anguish.

MM: Then in 1997 you and a colleague, Ghaël Samb Sall, established Les Ateliers de L’Arche—Dakar. For what purpose and does it still exist?

JR: I saw so many beautiful productions from around the world that it seemed crucial to share them with my Senegalese compatriots. It was a desire to show these beautiful works in Senegal that pushed us into creating Les Ateliers de L’Arche, especially L’Espace Bel’Arte. This allowed us to show fifty beautiful films, all of which had received the Palme d’Or at Cannes.

Originally from Senegal, I was for various reasons living outside the country. But Senegal nonetheless remained the place where we set and filmed our stories, and this necessitated having a structure in Senegal. For both organizational and funding needs, at least at that time.

MM: Are the functions of these institutions different?

JR: No, since they share the same purpose. And if you consider the mechanisms of film production in France in relation to the former colonies, you can obtain the funding in France only under the condition that the films are made in Africa. There was a period when you had to go to Senegal to obtain funding in France. You have the right to make a film only if you create images about where you come from. For a long time an African filmmaker could not secure financing if he made a movie entirely in France. He had to go home. So, if you are there [in France], you’re not really there. This reveals the personality of neocolonialism.

MM: What is the Ateliers de L’Arche and where is it located in Africa?

JR: While there are film studios in Tunisia and South Africa, there are none between them in West Africa. This project would have realized the construction of the first film studios in West Africa. Until 2000, the project went forward and a space was selected for construction in Dakar, since I am familiar with the city. Later, following the election of President Abdoulaye Wade in 2000, the project was aborted.

MM: Why the name Les Ateliers de L’Arche?

JR: The reference is to the Bible: Noah’s Ark. The analog to the aftermath of the Flood is what you call here…how do you put it?—“the postcolonial.” The studio was the site where I would have gathered the things which I would like to retain.

MM: In 2006, you completed And What if Latif Was Right?, which received the Best Documentary Film award at the Festival Vues D’Afriques. Its subject concerns democracy and governance in Senegal. Why this subject and why in Senegal?

JR: For two reasons: First, Senegal is falsely claimed to be an example of democracy in Africa. This is historically inaccurate. Senegal is neither the first country nor the last one to change from one political party in power to another peacefully and democratically. However, while Senegal has been presented and viewed as such, the myth has enabled those in power to conceal vast corruption since independence. Aside from the fact that as a Senegalese I am directly affected by the corruption, the main reason for the film was to say, “Be careful, this country you want to sell others is in fact a counter-example of real democracy.” It is critical that we stop using Senegal as an example of what it is not. Second, I wanted to contribute by the film to the democratization of Senegal.

MM: What is L‘Observatoire Audiovisuel sur les Libertés (the audiovisual observatory on liberties)?

JR: It’s a concept and practice of filmmaking—cinema engagé—that engages with social issues, politics, and the real life conditions of people and their efforts to mobilize for change. In my own practice it informs the documentary I started in 2000, showing that audiovisual as well as the news media have a role in raising consciousness, in reactivating a devotion to democracy in response to the political changes that occurred in Senegal since the election of Abdoulaye Wade.

MM: What is the Audiovisual African Coordination for Democracy that you co-founded at the Bamako World Social forum in 2006?

JR: My first experiment for this structure was with And What if Latif Was Right? I realized that the problems we have in Senegal are similar to those in other countries, such as Burkina Faso and Gabon. I wanted to enable people working in audiovisual media in these countries to become involved with cinema just as I have. The “Coordination” is an informal structure and was started after an encounter with a friend who was working on Burkina Faso’s situation since the assassination of the journalist Norbert Zongo in 1998. So it originated with two people who in their respective countries used audiovisual for democratic struggle. We need to continue to coordinate our activities by disseminating information to others. If there were in other African countries films such as And What if Latif Was Right? or Borry Bana (Mére de Norbert Zongo, 2005), they would raise consciousness.

MM: Are you still in contact with your counterparts in Burkina Faso?

JR: We are in contact. They have recently completed a film about the murder of [the then-president of Burkina Faso] Thomas Sankara (Thomas Sankara: The Upright Man, 2007). Work goes on.

MM: Although the coordination is informal do you convene meetings?

JR: No, it’s direct between Abdoulaye Diallo and me on our projects.

MM: Given your professional associations and political concerns, you are among a group of African filmmakers who are interrogating Africans’ complicity in Africa’s dependency and underdevelopment. Indeed, your work resonates with that of Jean-Marie Teno (Clando, 1996), Abderrahmane Sissako’s more recent film (Bamako, 2006), and even Gaston Kaboré’s later work, Zan Boko (1988) among others. Together, do you constitute a selfconscious movement of African filmmakers?

JR: I belong to no cinema organization or structure, African or non-African. I view myself as a global citizen and not in relation to a nation. A collective struggle has meaning only for the extent that it is rooted in each individual consciousness. My concerns are not as a filmmaker, but rather as a citizen who happens to be a filmmaker and who believes that he has the means to act as a citizen with what he knows best. Things are not right in my country. What can I do as a citizen? If I were a writer, I would write. Cinema is the site from where I can act as a citizen. From this perspective, I would like to underscore the respect and admiration I have for the work of Jean-Marie Teno on the situation in the Cameroon. I admire the consistency of his action as a citizen. He’s a filmmaker who thinks Cameroon is in an abyss and throughout his work he attacks this sickness—with what he knows how to do—to transform it. He is a remarkable filmmaker, a remarkable citizen.

MM: Is the work of these filmmakers—and you—part of a larger oppositional project?

JR: I believe the action I take inscribes itself as an act of a global citizenry where each person contributes with his abilities, his skills, his feelings. This is how I perceive belonging to a movement. It means committing, first, at the national level, to struggle against what is unjust and, second, with others, to struggle against what is unjust around the world. Each person brings to this struggle what he can. What is common to every person is that we fight against an unjust situation. That is our duty.

MM: Do these principles inform your own interventions?

JR: Yes, for example, as I said earlier, I don’t conceive of my commitment to social justice as a filmmaker. I am not a filmmaker engagé. I am an ordinary citizen engagé. I want the rank-and-file, the policeman, filmmaker, administrator, and judge to be engagé as self-conscious citizens. What interests me is the commitment of the citizen, not the militant filmmaker or his organization. I follow a different path. For example, in the documentary Plan Jaaxay!, I worked with the people who struggled against the government, who had failed to reconstruct their neighborhood in Dakar after a flood in 2005. As a citizen I participated in this struggle by making a film that showed what was happening.

MM: Let’s move now to globalization and its various manifestations. At FESPACO (2007), the 800-pound gorilla in the room was globalization, which invariably took center stage in conversations with filmmakers. Is globalization a source of societal trauma, masking refashioned forms of imperialism and neocolonial appropriation in Africa, as slavery and colonialism once were in the second half of the past millennium?

JR: I think that before discarding an old shoe I should make sure that it can no longer cover my foot. I always ask myself, in the multiplication of new concepts, if the one I have still fits before I choose another one. And this is the case for globalization and postcolonialism. I even have trouble uttering the words.

At one level, I question the terms’ utility in relation to concrete reality—their ability to grasp reality. The question that I ask myself is what word or concept does a person need to understand his reality? In the case of the women whose homes were flooded in Plan Jaaxay! and government that wishes to deprive them of their land, I ask how do these words, “globalization” and “postcolonialism,” function to enable these women—the oppressed peasant—to grasp their reality and act? The importance of the word is determined by the space in which it is uttered and by the reason why it is uttered. If the word is uttered by the academic world, it cannot have the same function, the same need, or the same urgency as in the case I’ve just described. There are enduring concepts which I believe enable Africans to understand our reality. I, therefore, do not need a new concept, if the old one still enables me to comprehend what is happening to me.

At another level, this dialectical way of thinking about the world has given rise to concepts, notably colonialism, then later, neocolonialism. When we consider the place where we interrogate our situation, the concept of neocolonialism is still relevant because it enables me to understand what is happening to me, as it does the oppressed Senegalese peasant to understand what is happening to him. This word is functional. This word is relevant. No other word is as relevant as this one because it makes it possible for the person who experiences a neocolonial situation to understand it. So any other word to describe this situation should be thrown away in the trashcan—in that same trashcan with postcolonialism and globalization— because we already have the tools to understand the world. We don’t need, especially the last one [globalization], which is very hip here in the United States. I wonder where it was conceived?

MM: Has the study of visual anthropology influenced your views about the disjuncture between how peasants understand their reality and academics account for and describe it?

JR: No. It is not linked to a formation or background. With these anthropological studies I was going against the grain. I oppose objective anthropology and defend a subjective anthropology. My concepts are down to earth, basic, and functional. I love a nation, a woman, a child. What can I do to make them well?

MM: However problematic is the term, can the African specificity be sustained and affirmed against the homogenizing and deterritorializing processes of globalization?

JR: As far as I am concerned, the concept of globalization does not enable us to understand the world.

MM: In conversation, the Burkinabé filmmaker Gaston Kaboré has asserted that “[t]he ultimate question that Africans must ask themselves is who are we?” Is there an answer to this question in a globalizing world?

JR: I disagree. I believe that the majority of Africans don’t ask themselves who they are because they know who they are. This question does not make sense. Therefore, I can’t answer a question derived from a presumption I consider invalid. What does the question mean in concrete terms? Take the case of Burkina Faso: Do you think the question four million peasants must ask themselves is who they are? If you observe the spheres in which such concerns prevail, they share nothing with the actuality and reality of Africa. Africa comprises millions of unemployed people. Along with constructions of Africa, intellectuals, reflecting upon Africans and their condition, do not really address these people. What we should expect from intellectuals is that they at least develop concepts that will help the masses of Africans to understand what is happening to them. If not this, then what are they here for?

MM: Although these questions about globalization are clearly frustrating, your responses are illuminating and warrant further discussion. Have the economic and cultural processes associated with globalization affected filmmaking practices in Africa?

JR: We think with words. To be able to think together, we have to first agree on the terms we use. When talking about cinema practices, the first hurdle is that the neocolonial state does not permit decision making by any other sector in society. People who work the land can’t live by their labor and certain industries are not permitted to exist because of the neocolonial state. Infrastructures don’t exist because the leadership does not concern itself with the development of the country. This situation is the principal cause preventing things from happening, and it is the point of departure for every other development in the country. Consequently, it becomes impossible to make films in the neocolonial state because the political leadership prevents the necessary conditions from developing for its creation. That is why people go elsewhere. In the film sector, they must leave their country and go elsewhere. Regarding film aesthetics, the issue is more complicated. In some circumstances, filmmakers, however dire the condition, are able to shoot, revealing remarkable aesthetics.

MM: Are these cinematographic productions increasingly homogeneous under globalization?

JR: I don’t think so, since we are in a fragmented situation. For example, dominant film industries are not only associated with a global North nor dominated ones exclusively with a global South. When we speak of a homogeneous cinema, Hollywood is an example. However, in the sphere of dominant film industries, Hollywood is a particular cinema that dominates and influences other dominant film industries, such as French cinema that tends to resemble the Hollywood formula. On the other hand, when we consider Hollywood cinema in the American domestic context, and not global context, it too dominates other cinemas by independent and black filmmakers for example. That is why I say that the term globalization is not functional. It does not enable us to understand the world as it is in reality. Maybe because I write and make films, there is also the issue of the filmmaker’s individual consciousness. To make films influenced by globalization, one must mentally be under its influence.

MM: Let’s consider this issue further from the standpoint of another term—modernity. Can an African modernity be at once universal and African?

JR: I’m going to respond to the question in the way I understand it. I think that Africans, like all other people in the world, have the capacity to think about their problems and propose solutions for themselves that can help others in the world. More concretely: If in one country the cure for cancer is found or if in a remote country in Africa a poem makes you love man and nature, I can propose it to the rest of humanity. So the dialectic between the particular and the general is applicable to and valid for Africa, as well as for the rest of the world. My response to your question may be limited because that’s how I understand it.

MM: But consider that other African filmmakers deploy the concept of globalization—as a unit of analysis—to comprehend and not obscure the daily lived experiences of people. For example in Abderrahmane Sissakos’s most recent film, Bamako, globalization, along with the IMF and World Bank, frame the experiences of peasants, workers, and professionals at the level of everyday life. The reason I’m pursuing this line of discussion is because there is a consequential exchange between filmmakers who agree with you, as well as with Sissako.

JR: I want to return to Kaboré’s earlier assertion about the question Africans must ask themselves. I think that an African in Burkina Faso should ask himself first and foremost how to get rid of a president who murdered a former president and journalist and regularly assassinates citizens who fight against oppression. In Bamako, the World Bank is the embodiment of globalization. African dictators, like Bokassa, applaud others who struggle against it in countries other than their own. Yes, the World Bank is to blame, but who is the World Bank? And what is the use of struggling against the World Bank and globalization if you are unable to fight against a dictator in a given country? I don’t understand what would be the use of such a struggle? So, for example, this movement against globalization will go to Senegal and organize a conference against globalization, but you won’t hear any of them say that Abdoulaye Wade is a murderer and thief. They will talk about and struggle against the World Bank and globalization, but who makes it possible for the bank to function in the country that they’re talking about?

MM: But isn’t that precisely why Bamako is so relevant, because it juxtaposes these multinational entities—that may very well constitute an abstraction to ordinary people—against their real and consequential effects on nations and, at the local level, communities and people? And Sissako depicts this relationship by situating the tribunal and its deliberations amidst laboring people and nursing mothers to underscore that North/South polarity is structural and not arbitrary?

JR: I just want to say that it was a pity that the women in the film wasted their time at the tribunal because the real struggle is in the streets.

MM: Doesn’t Sissako address this concern, too, in the scenes where criticism is leveled, not just against the whites as colonizers, but also the complicity of African dictators as well?

JR: This was the essential part that was not emphasized in the film.

MM: With few exceptions, films made by Africans are financed by Europeans. Does this compel African filmmakers to present Africa as Europe is prepared to receive it, as some African filmmakers claim?

JR: I can answer this question only by drawing on my own experiences as a filmmaker and, since 1992, as someone who has participated in funding commissions. I personally have not witnessed the censorship of any particular subject matter. But it’s important to interrogate the category of auto-censorship in this process because supply and demand in the market is significant. The issue of funding is in relation to what one wants to do and under what conditions one wants to do it. If I want to make a movie about the United States and have it play in 10,000 movie theaters, I am not going to make it in Breton or in Yoruba. Consider, for example, my last film: It was essentially funded by television networks, although traditionally filmmakers from Africa who reside in France fund their films by national institutions and networks. As far as I am concerned, from the writing of the script to the finished manuscript, if it is not reflected in the film, it is entirely my own fault. I am not forced to accept changes to obtain funding. I can say no and go elsewhere. I do not have to change it, if the subject matter I submitted to you does not interest you. I can submit it somewhere else.

MM: What should be the relationship between the filmmaker and the state with regard to the promotion, production, and distribution of African films.

JR: The state’s duty is to provide the concrete conditions in which people can thrive, including peace and security. These conditions should enable and support the creation of film studios. I believe that the automobile industry in the United States would not have developed without the government’s intervention. Similarly, African states have a role to play in providing an adequate infrastructure for the film industry. For example, electricity is needed to make films and the state has the responsibility to provide electricity. And a corrupt or totalitarian state does not attract commerce. States in Africa should evolve democratic conditions because we need democracy to make films.

MM: When should the role of the state cease? Should the state protect local film production?

JR: When the state speaks of protecting us, I get scared. Under democratic conditions there is no need for the state to protect us. In the case of Senegal, democracy comprises many elements. Aside from providing an infrastructure, the state should also fund certain fields. For example, some industries add value to a country, along with culture, and under certain circumstances should be protected. Even here in the U.S. some sectors are protected by the state. A responsible government in certain cases assists a sector so that it can maintain and develop itself. In my opinion, this is one of the state’s roles. However, the issue of whether the state should protect the country against the foreign invasion of images [television, film] is more complicated. I think it should focus primarily on creating the necessary conditions in the country to enable the creation of images. Strong images produced at the local level would settle this issue, because, otherwise, what comes close to protection can lead to censorship. In the case of Senegal, I believe this approach led to disaster. One can no longer write. Ironically, I can no longer write a script in Senegal without censorship since they adopted laws supposedly intended to develop the film industry.

MM: You personify the transnational subject who resides in First- and Third-World metropolises. The archetype of this identity is marked by a cosmopolitanism that rejects the specificities of the national for an enlightened universalism. You presumably are at home in Dakar, Paris, New Orleans, and, perhaps, here in Bloomington as well. How do you—the seemingly displaced subject—inhabit multiple spaces in a world whose signifying references are no longer apparent and less discernable?

JR: I want to ask you a question: How would you have asked this question to a friend named Peter, from Texas, who has lived in Senegal for 23 years? This question is the beginning of my response. There is a resemblance between Buruma who lives in a poor neighborhood in Dakar and Frank in a poor neighborhood in New Orleans. Imagine they know each other and that Buruma invited Frank to Dakar. Arriving there, Frank, who is undereducated and on the brink of starvation, like Buruma, is too a postcolonial fellow, but from the dominant world. He would tell Buruma, “Listen I came to see you, but careful, I am not a postcolonial person. I come to see you from the dominant world.” They would have a good laugh together.

MM: Yes. But if Frank were white and privileged, the dynamics of their relationship would not be the same, nor would the circumstance of their encounter.

JR: This means to me that the concept of the postcolonial is not functioning, since it does not enable us to understand reality in order to transform it. In this sense it is a dangerous concept. President Bush and Abdoulaye Wade have more in common than Abdoulaye Wade and I do. One can’t put me in the same category as Abdoulaye Wade, although we both come from the postcolonial world. And when I observe writers or filmmakers, who think they are raising peoples’ awareness, use this term, I say “Wait a minute—do they realize what they are doing?” Because they, as intellectuals, are prostituting themselves to exist amidst the very privilege they criticize.

MM: I’m not talking about the Third World intellectual who negotiates the privileges she/he brings to the table.

JR: I know. I’m answering the question in stages because I can’t answer it directly. At another level of response, I’d like to give an example. Are you familiar with the phenomenon of Modou Modou? They are peasants from Baol who speak several languages. They have lived abroad as long as I have and you can find them in markets where they make money that they bring back to their country. I include them to situate the issue and answer your question. I am not a postcolonial subject. I have an individual consciousness that looks at the world in a certain way and acts accordingly. This is what matters. If I thought from the framework where others would like to enclose me, it would be disastrous. Each individual carries baggage [history] on their back. Their consciousness evolves and is dynamic. An important influence is the migration of people—in your case from Italy to here [US]. I am not talking about globalization, but I believe we should struggle against any constraint on the natural movement of people. When these constraints are man-made, they are foolish. I don’t consider living in the United States a conflict because I come from the Third World. I believe that Senegal exists in the United States and that the United States exists in Senegal. I don’t have any problem with living in the U.S. precisely because life is not homogeneous. In fact, it is less problematic and more peaceful for me here than in Senegal. Between birth and death, a person follows a trajectory. He takes on many things, including culture, and rids himself progressively of other things. He is the consequence of such processes. I would rather tell you that I do not understand what this means, I do not understand your question.

MM: If you reject the categories of postcolonialism and globalization because they mask the reality of experience, what would you substitute them with to understand reality?

JR: Instinctively and empirically, I would return to the concepts that describe the world as transforming rather than through these terms as unchanging. In the past, people revolted. How did they talk about it in order to rise up? I would research this question. Coming from Senegal and Africa, I realize that to understand Senegal today, as in 1968 when we identified the concepts and practices of neocolonialism and the “bourgeoisie comprador,” and fought against them. Maybe we should go back to reexamine these old shoes and see if we can still use them.

MM: In Black Skin, White Masks, Frantz Fanon asserts that “to speak means to be in a position above all to assume a culture, to support the weight of a civilization.” Are the concepts and terms that Fanon applied to describe the colonial period more relevant to the postcolonial period than those you have consistently resisted in this conversation?

JR: Fanon says to speak is to take a position, to express a culture. He created a concept which at that precise moment in time enabled others to understand the psyche of the alienated and colonized. We should revisit and reconstitute these old shoes before changing concepts. But even before Fanon, the dialectics that helped make sense of the world and on the necessity of social uprisings and resistance to injustice were clearly articulated in the Communist Manifesto. From time to time we should reread it and The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon. There is enough material in these texts to consider the world and the conception of the state that dominates us in unimaginable ways. The Paris Commune too is still relevant and the ideas expressed in it are worth fighting for today, even here in the United States. And Fanon’s writings and Aimé Césaire’s Discourse on Colonialism enable us to understand the world. I believe that these texts help us identify the problems we have to solve today.

MM: If language gives specificity and expression to experience, then is it through language that a national and continental African identity is possible, although the language of necessity and, seemingly, choice and convenience is derived from the metropolis? What is at stake here? And how do you address this issue as filmmaker?

JR: Languages have a significant and unparalleled role in expression. There is no substitute for a native tongue. But it is a limitation not to speak other languages as well because they complement and enrich one’s native tongue. I wish that all the world’s citizens could appreciate all the world’s languages. The need to communicate in a multi-lingual world is possible through translation and, in the case of film, subtitles and voice over [VO]. But language expresses a culture’s way of seeing the world. So it is not just simply the language, it is the culture itself that is being conveyed in language.

I believe that in Africa developments in literature and cinema will be stifled if we don’t confront the language issue. While it is great to have translations, how beautiful it would be to taste things in the language in which it was conceived and felt. Take, for example, the Senegalese writer Boris Diop, whose novels I have long enjoyed in French. When I read his latest novel in Wolof it was extraordinarily powerful. Some parts of the novel can’t be translated because it would be too complicated and because in a passage there is an implicit reference to something that exists in a specific culture that can’t be translated because there is no term that exists in the language of the translation.

MM: With regard to work in development, I understand that your film Karmen Geï is being reincarnated in the context of post-Katrina New Orleans. Why revisit Karmen in New Orleans?

JR: There is a musical event on Carmen in New Orleans. Local musicians, individuals from diverse class backgrounds are going to participate in the performance. I was invited to participate in this project and welcomed the opportunity to revisit the character of Carmen and the social issues she evokes. The story of Carmen is intellectually rich and consistent. However, as many times as the story is told, you never get to the bottom of it. I’m also interested in the social context of New Orleans, which I find important. So it is not Karmen Geï whom I’m revisiting, it is Carmen.

MM: Will Carmen, assuming she is a woman in this new rendition, critique the debacle that is Katrina?

JR: I’m not sure. My initial intuition concerns the point of departure for the film. Although I haven’t begun writing the script, it will start with an orchestra. A young man from one of the poorest neighborhoods in New Orleans, in the limelight, beautifully plays the cello. I intend to emphasize the contrast between day and night, as everyone listens in the night from which he dreams, and the contrast between the man’s poverty and the audience’s cheers. I want to underscore the idea of visibility and invisibility through the recurring opera figures of Carmen and others. This is how I intend to approach Carmen. I have yet to consider the point of arrival in the film.

MM: Thank you, Mr. Ramaka.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

I am indebted to Eileen Julien for her critical comments and editorial interventions and to Laila Amine for her nuanced translation of the interview from French to English.

Melbourne Garber: Ladies and gentlemen, fellow Sierra Leoneans, and well-wishers, as we are on the cusp of our country’s 50th Independence Anniversary, we here in New Jersey are thrilled at this significant milestone. My task here is to relate the very interesting link between Sierra Leone and the United States. The link begins in 1462, when Portuguese navigator Pedro da Cintra became the first European to arrive in the area that is now known as Sierra Leone. He named this land Serra de Leão, which is Portuguese for “Lion Mountains.” Thirty years later, in 1492, an Italian navigator named Christopher Columbus, sailing under the auspices of Queen Isabella of Spain, happened upon the Americas as he tried to find a western route to India.

Within ten years of his landing in the Americas, the trans-Atlantic slave trade commenced. However, for the first 125 years or so, slavery was primarily directed towards South America and the West Indies, mainly carried out by the Spaniards and Portuguese. Then in 1620, the Mayflower set sail from Plymouth, England, carrying the Pilgrims to start the first British colony in North America. It was not long until the British joined the trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, and within fifty years slaves were brought to the area now known as North America. By the late 1600’s South Carolina and Georgia were being settled by Europeans. Around 1700, it was discovered that the Low-country of this area was conducive to the growing of rice, which until then had been imported from Asia.

“If you nor know osie you dey go, know osie you comot.“

As lucrative as this prospect was, local landowners soon realized how labor intensive the cultivation of rice was, and they found that they were not succeeding as they had anticipated. To solve their predicament, rice plantation owners in the Low-country turned to the Rice Coast of Africa: the area of West Africa stretching from modern-day Senegal to Liberia, where the deeply-ingrained tradition of rice growing dated back centuries. It was assumed that the rice-growing skills of Africans from the Rice Coast would be beneficial to Low-country plantations, and indeed, they were. By the early 1700’s, the economic incentives for a specialized slave trade centered around rice cultivation had encouraged a regular slave trade between the Rice Coast and South Carolina. The British, whose countrymen had colonized the eastern part of North America and who recognized the immense profits to be made from the rice-growing industry and slave trade, established a trading post on the Rice Coast at a small island originally called Bance Island, then Bence Island (now called Bunce Island), located at the mouth of the Rokel River in Sierra Leone.

By the mid-1700’s, rice cultivation had become so successful in South Carolina that the Bence Island-based trade had helped make Charleston one of the wealthiest cities in America. As word of this success traveled, landowners became willing to pay higher premiums for slaves from the Rice Coast than for slaves from elsewhere in Africa. The fact that the slave castle at Bence Island was destroyed by competitive forces five times throughout the 140 years of its operation underlines the critical role played by Bence Island in the British slave trade. However, despite its financial success, the trans-Atlantic slave trade from Bunce Island to Charleston did not immediately solve all of the challenges faced by landowners in the Low-country in the 1700’s. Epidemics of malaria and yellow fever—both carried to the Americas by African slaves, many of whom had built up some immunity to the diseases—spread throughout the area, carried by mosquitoes in the semi-tropical climate, which was not so dissimilar to the climate of certain areas of West Africa.

This unique group of African and African-descended slaves became known as the Gullah people, who still live in and around Charleston today, where their African traditions and cultural heritage persist.

Though many of the African slaves were immune to these diseases, these tropical fevers posed real threats to slave owners, many of whom elected to leave the Low-country during the wet seasons (when fevers were epidemic), or else chose to live in Charleston year-round. As such, many slave owners turned to a less direct form of supervision over their plantations—and by consequence, over their slaves, leaving trusted slaves as supervisors to manage the rice growing plantations in the Low-country. With less frequent and less sustained interactions with their white owners, Africans on these plantations were able to preserve much of their culture and traditions—more so than slaves in other areas. This unique group of African and African-descended slaves became known as the Gullah people, who still live in and around Charleston today, where their African traditions and cultural heritage persist.

For example, the Gullah speak a creole language that is based on English, but contains many African loanwords and structural influences. The Gullah language is directly related to Sierra Leonean Krio, as seen in words such as bigyai (“greedy”), usai (“where”), and pantap (“on top”). Sierra Leonean influences on Gullah food are evident in Gullah dishes such as red rice (a version of the West African Jollof rice) and rice and greens (called plassas in Sierra Leone). Gullah storytelling, music (including the call-and-response style), crafts, farming, and fishing traditions all exhibit strong influences from West Africa, especially Sierra Leone. The link with Sierra Leone can even be traced to the name found in the naming of Gullah children, whose names include Sorie, Salifu, Jah, Hawa, Mariama and Fatu, all common Sierra Leonean first names.

Thomas Peters ultimately found himself at the forefront of the effort to repatriate freed slaves, including those in Nova Scotia, to Freetown in Sierra Leone.

Another interesting link between Sierra Leone and the United States is found in the late 1700’s, during the Revolutionary War. During the war, the British offered freedom to any slave who joined the British army. With this encouragement, many slaves escaped and joined the British, including Thomas Peters, a slave in North Carolina who rose to the level of Sergeant in the British army. After the end of the war, the British did indeed grant freedom to slaves who had fought on their behalf, and many of these freed slaves were sent to Nova Scotia, which was still under British rule. Thomas Peters ultimately found himself at the forefront of the effort to repatriate freed slaves, including those in Nova Scotia, to Freetown in Sierra Leone. Today, he is recognized as one of the founding fathers of modern-day Sierra Leone.

The link between Sierra Leone and the United States stretches further into the political realm of the Revolutionary War, when two business partners who were intimately involved in the Sierra Leone-America slave trade became negotiators of American independence. In the 18th century, Bunce Island was managed by an English company called Grant, Oswald & Sargent, run by Richard Oswald. Oswald developed a relationship with one of the wealthiest rice planters and slave owners in South Carolina, a man named Henry Laurens. Laurens soon became Oswald’s agent in Charleston, organizing local auctions when new slaves arrived from Bunce Island. Years later, during the American Revolutionary War, Laurens was elected President of the Constitutional Congress. On his way to Holland as an American envoy, Laurens was arrested by the British and thrown in jail. His bail was posted by Oswald, and as a free man, Laurens remained in England until the end of the war. He was ultimately appointed one of the four American Peace Commissioners to negotiate the American Independence under the Treaty of Paris—at the same time as Richard Oswald was selected to head the British negotiating team!

The prominence of major players in the Bunce Island-Charleston slave trade in the American Revolution is not surprising, as Bunce Island was undeniably among the most significant trading posts in the history of the British trans-Atlantic slave trade, marking the point of forced departure for thousands of Africans to the Americas. As a result, DNA testing has suggested that over one-third of African-Americans today have roots in Sierra Leone, including author Maya Angelou; former US Ambassador to the UN Andrew Young; civil rights leader Jesse Jackson; radio host Tom Joyner; Julius Garvey (the son of Marcus Garvey); and Martin Luther King III (the son of Martin Luther King, Jr.). Given its significance, it is not surprising that in 1948 Bunce Island became Sierra Leone’s first officially protected historic site.

“…so too will we grow stronger after our rebel war of the 1990’s.”

Today the island, to which so many African Americans can trace their family trajectories, is undergoing restoration to make it more accessible as a site of national and international Diasporan heritage in Sierra Leone. As we say in Krio: If you nor know osie you dey go, know osie you comot. “If you don’t know where you are going, know where you are from.” As we celebrate the anniversary of our country’s independence from British colonization, similar to the United States’ celebrations of its own independence every July 4th, we recognize that just as America grew stronger after of its Civil War in the 1860’s, so too will we grow stronger after our rebel war of the 1990’s. We will build upon and broadcast the amazing and unique connection between the United States, the current home of so many children of Sierra Leone, and the land that we love, our Sierra Leone.

Paulin S. Vieyra’s father was a Yoruba railroad administrator. His mother, originally from Sierra Leone, was a merchant. In 1935, they sent Paulin, then 10, to France to attend boarding school. During the war, his school was closed. Moving from family to family, Vieyra’s precarious situation led to poor health, including tuberculosis. After the war and upon graduation from high school in 1947, Vieyra, then 22, enrolled at the Universite de Paris to study biological science. That same year, Vieyra, who had already discovered and developed some love for cinema, made an encounter that would forever change the course of his life and career. For his adaptation of the short story Le diable au corps by Raymond Radiquet, Claude-Autant-Lara cast Vieyra in as an extra, playing a black African soldier. After that first experience, Vieyra dropped out of the university and his biology major to enroll as the first and then only sub-Saharan African at Paris’ Institute des hautes études cinématographiques (Institute for Cinema Studies (IDHEC), in 1947.

In 1950, he had to interrupt his film training to have half of his lungs removed due to tuberculosis and heavy smoking.  In 1954, he graduated from IDHEC with a thesis on cinema in French-speaking Africa. As a part of his requirements, Vieyra directed the five-minute short film C’était il y a quatre ans (It was four years Ago), with the central subject the alienation of an African student in Paris. In 1955, Vieyra made history by directing the first substantial film by a French-speaking sub-Saharan African, Afrique sur Seine, 21-minute, 16mm black-and-white fiction film with Marpessa Dawn, star of Black Orpheus (1959). It was produced by the French Ministry of Cooperation, co-directed by aspiring filmmakers Jacques Melo Kane and Mamadou Sarr and shot by Robert Caristan. This quartet became known as le groupe africain de cinema (The African Cinema Group).

By necessity, this first African film was made in Paris, due to the 1934 French law Decret Laval. Named after its sponsor, French Minister of the Colonies Pierre Laval, it prohibited any filming in Africa without a proper license from this ministry. Thus unable to shoot in Africa, Vieyra used footage from militant film director Rene Vautier’s Afrique 50, shot in Côte d’Ivoire in the 50s. Afrique sur Seine serves both as birth certificate for sub-Saharan African cinema and ushered in a new era of self-representation and cultural revalorization through film. Vieyra gave voice to an exiled generation of African artists and students living in France and in search for their own future and that of their continent. Furthermore, as a direct echo of the 1955 Bandoeng Conference that allowed the peoples of Africa and Asia to voice their natural right to self determination, Afrique sur Seine defined the paradigm of the newborn African cinema. It would be a cinema of resistance, an alternative to the Euro-American commercial, dream-making cinema.

While in Paris, Vieyra was an active member of Presence Africaine, a panafrican quarterly review founded in Paris in 1947 by Senegalese scholar Alioune Diop and also known as the Cultural Review of the Black World. At Presence, Vieyra met and worked with an impressive cast of African, American and European writers, intellectuals, scientists, cultural, and political activists: founders of the Negritude Movement including Léopold Senghor, Léon Damas and Aimé Césaire; the African-American writer Richard Wright; and French progressive intelligentsia including Jean Paul Sartre, Albert Camus, and Georges Balandier. He helped produce the First Congress of Black Writers and Artists at the Sorbonne in 1956 and played the crucial role of memory keeper by filming the proceedings. He played the same role during the second congress held (Rome, 1959). In the late 1950s, Vieyra became the film review editor and film critic for Presence Africaine and visited eastern bloc capitals including Warsaw, Budapest, Prague, and Sofia.

In 1956, the French National Assembly’s Overseas Reform Act (The Loi-cadre) transferred certain powers to elected territorial governments of French West Africa. A year later, sensing the possibilities of independence, Vieyra left France for Dakar, Senegal, the headquarter of French West Africa. For 23 years, from 1957 to his retirement in 1980, he played a pivotal role in the newly created Ministry of Information. He served as director of the Actualites sénégalaises, a popular newsreel program shown in West African theaters. He also produced more than 30 short fiction and documentary films (see appendix) and served as chief reporter of all official trips made by President Leopold S. Senghor between 1960 and 1975. From 1972 to 1975, Vieyra also served as the first director of programming of the first Senegalese television station.

Throughout his career, Vieyra made only one feature, En residence surveillée (House Arrest, 1981). Still, he is a key figure in African cinema history, the first sub-Saharan African to direct a film and the first to make one in an indigenous African language (his 11-minute-long 1964 film Sindiély was shot in Wolof, the national language of Senegal).

After retiring from Senegalese radio and television, Paulin received his doctorate in cinema studies from the Sorbonne under the guidance of French anthropologist and film director Jean Rouch in 1982. He taught at the (CESTI) Centre d’Etudes des Sciences et Techniques de l’Information – (Centre of Studies in Information Sciences and Techniques ), a school of journalism created in Dakar in 1965 with the help of UNESCO.

Vieyra was a groundbreaking critic of sub-Saharan Africa cinema. His  works included Le cinema et l’Afrique (Cinema and Africa, 1969), Ousmane Sembene cinéaste (1972), a monograph that documents works from Borom Sarret (1963) to Emitai (1971); Le cinema africain des origins à 1973 (1974). In 1983 he published the first comprehensive study of Senegalese film production, Le cinema au Senegal (Cinema in Senegal). Vieyra also served as a mentor and production director for Senegalese filmmakers including Sembene and Ababacar Samb Makaram and as a founding member of film institutions including The Pan-African Federation of Filmmakers (FEPACI) and the Pan-African Film Festival (FESPACO). Vieyra also produced Sembene’s films Mandabi (1968), Emitaï (1971), Xala (1974) and Ceddo (1977).

Upon returning from the 1987 edition of FESPACO, Vieyra was hospitalized in Paris for three months. He died on November 4, 1987 at age 62.

Bibliography:

– 1969: Le cinéma et l’Afrique, (Africa and the Cinema) Présence Africaine
– 1972: Sembène Ousmane Cinéaste tome 1, Présence Africaine
– 1974: Le cinéma Africain: des Origines à 1973 tome 1, Présence Africaine
– 1983: Le Cinéma au Sénégal, collection Cinémédia, éditions OCIC l’Harmattan

Selected Filmography

1) Shorts
– 1954: C’était il y a 4 ans (It Was Four Years Ago) 5’
– 1955: Afrique sur Seine (Africa on the Seine), co directed with Mamadou Sarr): 16mm, 22’
– 1957: Un homme, un idéal, une vie (A Man, an Ideal, a Life) 16mm, 26’
– 1962: Une nation est née (A Nation is Born) 35mm, 20’
– 1963: Lamb, Lutte sénégalaise (Lamb, Senegalese Wrestling) 35mm, 18’
– 1964: Sindiély: 35mm, 11’
– 1982: Birago Diop, conteur (Birago Diop, A Storyteller): 16mm, 26’
– 1982: Iba N’Diaye peintre, (Iba Ndiaye Painter) 16mm, 45’

2) Features
– 1981: En résidence surveillée: LM; 35mm, coul, 90’

3) Director of Production
– 1968: Le Mandat (The Money Order) by Sembène Ousmane
– 1971: Emitaï by Sembène Ousmane
– 1971: Kodou by Ababacar Samb
– 1974: Xala by Sembène Ousmane
– 1976: Ceddo by Sembène Ousmane

The 23rd edition was no exception with more than 50 works from 25 different countries. Ironically though, opening night brought a full house, not to Africa but to a more distant, idyllic, unexpected place: Vanuatu, a Melanesian Archipelago in the South Pacific! There in the small village of Yakel on the island of Tanna, one of the few remaining tribes in the world, a story of how arranged marriages led to tragedy is told, which made the tribe reconsider their ancestral custom. The landscape is stunningly beautiful. A pinkish, bluish haze and a roaring, belching volcano give a mesmerizing energy and dreamlike quality to the plot. The choice of Tanna to open the festival is less puzzling than it sounds though. First, it is obvious that the protagonists have dark skin and Afro-textured hair but there is more, for they actually describe themselves as the original blacks, some of their distant ancestors having left for what is today Africa! The fact that some words in their language are also found in Swahili or Yoruba has started to intrigue scholars.

Of course there is a little bit of provocation in the choice of a non-African film to open the African Film Festival, but it fits into the mission of the festival and is one of its most constant and endearing features over the years: to challenge viewers, take them out of their comfort zones, subvert stereotypes and traditional notions, and provoke and open minds to unconventional views. I remember Viva Riva a few years back, who took the audience by surprise on opening night with a beautiful erotic scene and graphic violence, which many resented as “non-African,” although some marveled at the ability of African filmmakers to fit into the genre and create a compelling action movie — with depth and a social conscience, I would say. Coming back to opening night, Tanna was unanimously well received (“It could have been worse” was the most severe comment I overheard by someone who saw it as another anthropological movie). I think most people liked the unusual and yet familiar tragic romance, so beautifully enacted. Some also felt that we should listen to the Tanna, for we have lost our ways, lost what is humane in us. The Tanna have wisdom, and dignity and tolerance. As someone in the audience pointed out: they are more civilized than we are.

Under the banner “Modern Days, Ancient Nights: Fifty Years of African Filmmaking”, the 23rd edition paid tribute to its most revered master, Ousmane Sembène, and offered a possibility to reflect about the changes and meaningful shifts that have marked African cinema in the course of those fifty years. A great number of filmmakers programmed this year were women. It reminded me that in 1993, the first edition, there was only one woman in a sea of distinguished males: Safi Faye, who deserves recognition as a pioneer. The Senegalese director went on to make Mossane, highlight of the 4th edition, winner in Cannes in 1996, and a true classic. Watching Hermon Hailay’s beautiful film, Price of Love, centerpiece of the 23rd edition, and the films of many other promising young female directors, I could not help thinking not only about the determination it took for women to embrace a career fiercely guarded by males, but also about the thematic evolution from Mossane, set in a traditional peasant village with its natural aesthetic beauty, gorgeous setting, ancestral rites and customs, to Price of Love set in an urban, bustling, modern city where a taxi driver unwillingly gets entangled with a prostitute. Modern Days, Ancient Nights – both stories are beautiful and end tragically. Both films represent two widely different images of Africa, two different epochs in filmmaking.

I liked Price of Love, and Lamb and Red Leaves also shown this year, because I still want to be told a story, be charmed, and drawn into the lives and adventures of fictional characters who touch me. But documentaries inform, and they are getting more attention today than before, as they are the work of creative, original filmmakers who explore the amazing complexity and depth of real life in a compelling and personal way. And they also tell stories, but differently. The fact that on a beautiful sunny warm Sunday afternoon at 4 o’clock—after five days of cold unrelenting rain—screenings were sold out for two documentaries, shows that the audience shares that interest. Both the film Queen Nanny, which explores the legend of the Jamaican warrior who defeated the British and Yemanjá, which investigates the origin of Candomblé in Brazil, are attractive and well researched. They seek to retrieve clues into the past from the present. They recover priceless facts, gather fragile testimonies and put them together to reconstruct stories that have long been lost, suppressed or distorted, told by others or never told before.

Let us not forget that it is also the festival that brought to New York the first documentaries by African filmmakers, especially Jean-Marie Téno’s Afrique je te plumerai (Africa I Will Fleece You, 1st edition of the festival). At a time when fiction was overwhelmingly the choice of filmmakers, he realized the potential of documentaries to help change the negative representations suffered by Africans and empowered them to reclaim the past and tell their own stories. His very personal and direct approach to documentaries influenced generations of filmmakers after him. Many favorites of the public this year were documentaries, for instance Martha & Niki, the poignant story told, with so much empathy, of two successful female hip-hop dancers whose very different outlooks on life tears them apart. I noticed lots of teary eyes after the screening.

Many films also touched upon controversial social issues —prostitution, child witchcraft, integration of LGBT people and values, and the role that the creative arts can play in rebuilding a country after genocide. The festival is a forum where ideas are discussed, where the public meets filmmakers; filmmakers who hardly know of each other’s existence on the continent meet each other, and all have the rare opportunity to exchange views and mix in a relaxed atmosphere. The Q&As were well attended, more so it seems than in previous years, with a well-informed public, anxious to tackle real issues.

The conversation was also enhanced by the presence of distinguished historians and scholars who sometimes offer lectures in their area of expertise, as was the case when Professor Mamadou Diouf and Professor Clyde Taylor discussed Manthia Diawara’s imaginary conversation entitled Negritude: A Dialogue Between Wole Soyinka And Senghor. They provided additional facts and a broader frame of reference, so much so that the public quietly left the theater when asked, but resolutely sat in the amphitheater eager to hear more.

The ethnocentric point of view of anthropological studies has often been condemned, but watching Pastor Paul, one can experience a sense of gleeful vindication as the situation unfolds and the observer becomes the observed. Pastor Paul tells the story of a Western scientist, clueless and candid, who comes to Africa to study drumming and the mathematical structure of rhythm. Only he ignores their spiritual power. He is hired to play a ghost in a Nollywood movie and becomes possessed – I particularly liked the reversal of roles. He is the object of uncomprehending looks and idle speculation. The rationalizing Westerner is even accused of being “unpredictable” by the African director who scrutinizes him and observes his erratic behavior with growing perplexity.

“Today male and female directors and actors are talented, enthusiastic and considerably younger.”

Africa in NY, a series of shorts, was a wonderful surprise. I was thrilled to see the line-up of young filmmakers come on stage for the Q&A: imaginative, talented and perceptive, comfortable on stage but slightly surprised to be in the spotlight, knowing that they represent the future of African film. In their films they are skilled at conveying strong emotions. They explore the creative freedom offered by technical innovation and they play a part in the evolution of narrative in cinema in general. The director of Reluctantly Queer, for instance, uses veiled black and white images to tell the story of a young man painfully torn between his beautifully fulfilling love story with a man and the pain he will cause his mother in Africa; or Olive, where juxtaposing two stories in black and white with sparse dialogue and striking cinematography, conveys the most harrowing story of love and betrayal; or Contained where the filmmaker uses simple, visual effects to bring the audience into the mind of a man held in complete isolation as he is suspected of having Ebola.

Watching the line-up, some of the earliest days of the New York African Film Festival came back to my mind — the “classic period”, I would say, when it was more solemn. The filmmakers on stage were prestigious, intimidating, sometimes demanding, overwhelmingly male and considerably older than us. Today male and female directors and actors are talented, enthusiastic and considerably younger. And they are attuned to the world in which they live in a wonderful way. And, yes, they certainly know how to tell a story.

I continued my journey up to Maysles Cinema in Harlem, the next venue of the festival. We had the leisure of attending a screening (among others equally interesting) of a three hour monumental exploration of contemporary Egypt: the various political, religious and social forces at play explaining the somewhat comparable paths of three subsequent rulers: Nasser, Sadat and Mubarak. The filmmaker, Jihan El-Tahri, herself a powerful presence, charismatic and effervescent, made up for a twenty minute unexpected pause during the screening, substituting for image and sound, adding comments and her thoughts. After the screening, she answered questions with equal patience and competence. And with a most radiant infectious laugh, she admitted a preference for Nasser and declared that if she had to summarize her monumental work in one single sentence, she would call it “The failure of the post-colonial state”. In the festival, it had a more appealing title: Egypt’s Modern Pharaohs.

Then, at the end of May, I took the train to the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM), to an equally comfortable seat in a comfortable theater for the last part of my journey and the last five days of the festival. Most films here were dedicated to Senegal (complementing DanceAfrica’s spotlight this year on the country). Fabrice Monteiro’s photos have a clear message: we must save the planet. To reach out to young generations the photographer becomes a contemporary storyteller. In his tale, the earth Gaia is suffering from the abuse that humans wield on her. So she sends messengers who represent different wounds with scientific names: depletion, air pollution, toxic wastes, land over-exploitation and desertification. Only here they are embodied by traditional ominous spirits, the jinns – gigantic, aesthetically beautiful figures made of recycled material with the collaboration of the creative Senegalese designer Jah Gal. They are asking humans to change their ways. The film The Prophecy aptly chronicles the making of the photos, showing how tradition and art intertwine to send a hopeful message to those who have a role to play in the future. And there are solutions, says Fabrice Monteiro. Young people must realize they have the power to make changes.

Moussa Touré’s TGV shown at BAM, with the passengers of a Dakar bus en route for the border of Guinea, embarked on a hazardous journey in a lush, desolate landscape, reminded me of the classic Western: Stagecoach. Except here, danger did not come from Indians but from the imaginary “Bijagos.” Moussa Touré clearly intended to pay tribute to the classic Western movie, but his luminous social satire, incisive and funny, is a free adaptation of the conventions of the genre. One recognizes the atmosphere of impending doom, the long close-ups, diffident stares, the suspense, ominous signs, the breathtaking landscapes, etc., but the plot and the characters — the polygamist, the rainmaker, the marabout, the politician – are decidedly Africans. Another interesting departure is the fact that one night as all the passengers look for a place to sleep, the three women band together… mischievously, as if they were not impressed by their men playing cowboys. The film was made in 1997, but it remains vividly modern and the dialogues are subtle and full of biting humor.

I wonder whether today’s young filmmakers know that all African filmmakers once upon a time wanted to make a Western, not unlike Italians with their passion for spaghetti Westerns. They did more than an imitation though, they wanted to add their own voice to the general fascination for Western movies and the myth of the hero, and pay tribute to a genre they grew up with. As Cheik Fantamady Camara thus summarized: in the 70’s we dressed up as cowboys and filmed with a fake camera. When they had real cameras, they went beyond the boundaries of the genre, as brilliantly shown by Moussa Touré. It is interesting to trace this fascination for Western movies in African cinema. Think of Mambety’s Hyenas. Even though his film is based on a play by Swiss author Dürrenmatt, he cannot help giving a Far West flavor to his set – remember the station in the middle of nowhere, the sort of saloon where idle men hang around all day, the train that never comes but keeps whistling in the distance. And even Abderrahmane Sissako with his brilliant film Bamako, in which he stages the trial of the World Bank, makes a totally unexpected cameo appearance in the film as “Cowboy 2”, alongside Danny Glover as “Cowboy 3”. In the 60’s, some African filmmakers actually dreamed of making a “real” Western, as shown by Rahmatou Keita in her wonderful film Al’leesi (2004) that documents the birth of cinema in Niger in the 60’s. I remember a filmmaker excessively annoyed when a giraffe suddenly appeared in the distance ruining his take of the presumed American West.

“Some of Sembène’s Pan-African vision and his vision of women taking their fate in their own hands had come true.”

The audience at BAM gave a warm welcome to Samba Gadjigo’s film SEMBENE! and appreciated the presence of Samba Gadjigo, who engaged audience members in a post-screening Q&A. Samba is the official biographer of Ousmane Sembène and was also a close friend of the director. Their closeness, which covers a span of many years, allows for a more intimate portrait of the fierce “rebel who used his camera as a weapon.” The film also documents Sembene’s long career and shows excerpts from his films, which makes it a fascinating retrospective and homage to the master. A striking image stays with me: a very old man with failing eyesight, shakily moving around the set and yet handling, for the first time, an international cast and crew, working 12 hours a day in a remote place plagued by unbearable heat and no electricity. And making Moolaadé his last and most optimistic film about a most controversial topic: female genital mutilation. I can imagine the glee he felt when coming to the 2005 festival, his last visit, he sat one evening surrounded by young female filmmakers from east Africa, and guests of the festival, vehemently discussing genital mutilation. He had been heard. The old rebel had a smile on his face and remained silent. Some of his Pan-African vision and his vision of women taking their fate into their own hands had come true.

Here ended this year’s journey, but I would like to add a word on how it began. It was a town hall event three days before opening night, quite an experience and a huge success! As part of Thomas Allen Harris’ Digital Diaspora Family Reunion Roadshow, some guests and participants’ cherished photos from their family albums were projected on a large screen. As their owners shared memories, the audience felt drawn into the lives of people they did not know and who became strangely familiar. Just like African films tell us a different story than the ones portrayed for too many decades by others, photos do the same, they reclaim and enrich the past.  A digital display of DDFRR photos—some stunningly beautiful – ran in the amphitheater at Lincoln Center during the festival, a perfect companion to fifty years of African filmmaking.

The CCP has actively engaged its participants on technical and practical skills in documentary filmmaking. With the aid of professional tutors, participants were adequately enabled to acquire professional skills needed to produce polished documentaries, including development and each stage of production.

They were instructed on all of the elements that define the craft as a whole such as, the interview process, techniques and skills needed in producing vox populi documentation and using video cameras. The CCP participants have grown and excelled. Some of the students have since been hired to do film production in the country by international news agencies. Furthermore, one student has begun working on an oral history project, in which he is taking photographs and collecting audio reports from around the country. Please enjoy the videos!

Ebola: An Oral Testimony by Jongopie Cole

(Transcript translated from Krio)

Jongopie: Good people. How are you? This is the Cultural Conservation Program, CCP, Salone (Sierra Leone). My name is Jongopie Cole. Today we talk about a serious sickness, called the Ebola virus. This sickness has killed many of our people and has caused our country to fall behind. But first, I will tell you how this sickness came about. Ebola is a sickness that has resurged after 20 to 30 years from when it was discovered in a country called Zaire in 1976. This illness was discovered in a river that they call “Ebola River”, in one part of the country, and because of movement the sickness reached another country, Sudan, and over 284 people ended up with the Ebola virus. In addition, in 1994 the sickness was found in Cote d’Ivoire when a young female ethnologist performed research on a dead chimpanzee in Taï forest. Eventually, she herself caught the Ebola sickness. In 2014, we heard that the Ebola virus had reached our neighboring countries of Guinea and Liberia and killed many people. We didn’t take it seriously and not want to hear it. Shortly thereafter, we found out that the sickness had reached our country but people were in denial. I listened to someone who told me how the sickness came into Salone. 

Commentator 1: Well, the sickness came from one the lady who came from Guinea and came to see to an herbalist for treatment in Kailahun (eastern province of Sierra Leone). The herbalist treated her and told her she was okay to return back to Guinea. On the way back, the woman died on the road and two days later, the herbalist who treated her died as well. Shortly after, the whole household of the herbalist contracted the virus. They showed symptoms and were vomiting and then all died. Because no one believed, that made the sickness spread across the country. (Date: August 27^th, 2014) Because of this sake, I began listening to people who had things to say about the Ebola virus. 

The following three interviews were recorded on August, 30^th 2014 

Commentator 2: Well my view is that, I haven’t seen anyone sick with the Ebola virus but other people emphasize that the virus is serious? I don’t deny the fact that the sickness exists, it does exist, but the way that the people emphasize it and deliberate on it, I don’t think it’s so serious in this country. That is my own view. 

Commentator 3: The sickness exists, because you see a lot of people who are sick and they take them for testing. Yes, the reality is that the sickness exists. 

Commentator 4: Well, this Ebola sickness, you hear them say it is in Salone, but I’ve never seen symptoms of it and really, I don’t believe that it is in this country. 

Jongopie: And because most people do not believe, this sickness has begun to spread to all parts of the country. 

The following recording was an actual incident in which the documentarian visited a friend and witnessed his friend’s brother ailing.

“I am dying, I am dying! Miatta, I need to go to the hospital. I am dying. Call my aunty, my body is feeling warm! I have a high fever, you guys are running away from me now. I am dying, call aunty. Miatta. I am dying! Miatta!” “Oh, my brother! Oh, my brother! (Family members wailing).” 

Below is a testimony by Ibrahim Bio, whose brother was previously heard wailing and in pain. 

Commentator 5: I am Ibrahim Bio. I am one of the people who denied that the sickness was real, but ever since my brother died, now I believe that it is real. One day my brother came back from work at the office, at night. When he came, he told my aunt that he was feeling feverish in his body. He said he felt like someone hit him with a stick. My aunt advised and said ‘in the morning, you will go to the hospital’. And he said no, that he won’t go to the hospital because if he goes to the hospital, they will give him an injection and he will die. So he decided to wait, and in the morning, his brother began vomiting. He vomited heavily and ran frequently to the toilet, we all became scared and stayed away from him. Because of this sickness that everyone is talking about, we stayed away from him. So my aunt decided to call 117 (Emergency number). But when she called, my brother began to cry. He suffered, he really, really suffered. I saw my brother as he was dying. We had to stay away from him. He continued using the toilet frequently, by this time he was vomiting blood. It just took over him, this sickness. He was screaming from pain. The sickness really took over him. After six days, my brother died. After my brother died, that’s when 117 called us. When they arrived, they started doing some type of test on my brother and then they took his body away. They soon discovered that it was Ebola that he had. So they decided that all of us in the household were at risk. They quarantined our house and blocked our entrance with soldiers and police. So we could not go anywhere. We could not talk to our neighbors. But when we were inside our house, truth be told, it was difficult for us to survive because many of us had things to do to maintain our livelihood. So, when we were in the house, we suffered and there were no basic necessities available in our home. Every now and then, the authorities sent us food that was delivered by the soldiers. They began to really treat us like slaves, like dogs. That’s how they really treated us. They locked us up for 21 days and in between those 21 days, in the beginning it was just so difficult. We didn’t talk to anyone. We weren’t allowed around anyone. After those 21 days, they left us. They checked all of us and said that none of us had the sickness besides our brother. Now I try to advise people. They always say that Ebola doesn’t exist. Ebola exists and it kills! 

Jongopie: Within a month, the sickness turned into an epidemic in our country. What I mean is that, it entered all of the streets and towns and people just began to die every day. Because of this, the president declared a 3-day (September 19^th to the 24^th) home shut in for an Ebola campaign to rid the country of the sickness. 

Excerpt from President Koroma’s speech given on September 16^th, 2014 

Jongopie: Salone people listened to the president because they had become tired of the Ebola virus. But after the three day lock down of the country, I asked people what they thought about it. 

The following interviews were recorded on September 22^nd, 2014

Commentator 6: For these three days we thank God, because nothing happened and we are here. It has not been easy but we thank God. Now, they are saying we will get will get more quarantined days because of Ebola. 

Commentator 7: Well this three day shut down, I don’t think it makes any sense, because even though they kept us in the house for three days, we are still going back to the same thing. We are still getting cases of Ebola, and people are still hiding their sick. So, I’m not sure it makes any sense. It was difficult for the masses, some people didn’t even have food to eat. Some people were grumbling about the situation. So I don’t know, I’m not sure it makes sense. 

Commentator 8: The 3-day lock down by the government is a very good idea. Although, initially people did not like the idea, but at the end of the 3 days, people were in the houses, some were tormented because they were used to going around town and conducting their daily businesses. But at the end of the day, the results that yielded from this shutdown have been very positive, in the sense that a lot of sick people were discovered. A lot of corpses that people had inside their houses were also discovered. Now the supervisors and volunteers can go around talking to people and getting their opinion. And as I said, they results have been very good. People said, if they did the lockdown it would lead to various problems, but it turned out to be the opposite. We could not predict this outcome of the amount of sick people that have turned out and the amount of people that died. So in my own opinion, it would be better, although maybe not in the distant future, to let the government run another lockdown. I believe that within 3 weeks, 21 days, if anyone else is affected by Ebola, they will come out by the tenth day.

Jongopie: For the sake of this outcome, I asked people what their hopes are for the end of Ebola. 

Commentator 9: Well, the way I see it, Ebola will end, but it will take time for it to end because people still don’t want to accept that Ebola exists. 

Commentator 10: Well basically, I hope that by this December the disease will have ended. According to the medical teams, they say that the Ebola virus does not survive high temperatures (too much heat will lessen its power to quickly damage the cells in the body). 

Jongopie: My good people, thank you for listening. I want to say thank you to the studio engineer who helped me bring this recording to you, Sinneh Njai Sesay.

Born in Venice in 1932, film festivals have exploded worldwide in recent decades. Every significant international metropolis, up-and-coming city or hamlet now has one of its own. France alone hosts some 500 film festivals — that’s more than one for every day of the year. The best festival you may have never heard of, the Telluride Film Festival, takes place each Labor Day weekend in Colorado.

Festivals nourish world cinema, sustaining its evolution as an art form as well its militant dimension. They support a greater diversity of subjects, points of view and styles than found on Netflix or Amazon. Festivals keep alive the communal experience of film viewing, considered an anachronism in the age of laptops and cell phones. Many also court controversy. In 2011, Berlin invited Iranian director Jafar Panahi, then under house arrest in his native country, to serve on its jury, a position Panahi was not allowed to accept.

Festivals come in all shapes, sizes and flavors; LGBT, African-American, Celtic and more. There are festivals of African cinema in New York, Jewish cinema in Hong Kong and Asian cinema in Italy. Every conceivable genre has its showcase, while a first-rate nonfiction film on any topic will find a festival devoted to it’s very own subject matter.

Festivals sift through the abundance of new digital movies, selecting among tens of thousands of features produced each year, curating the outstanding and sparing us the worst. In 2015, Sundance showed 118 features out of 4,105 submissions. A filmmaker has less chance of getting a short shown at Telluride than a high school student has of gaining admission into Stanford.

Major festivals – such as Cannes, Sundance and Toronto — work hand-in-hand with global media industries. Business and publicity (markets, stars, red carpets, press conferences, paparazzi) butter their bread. After the FIFA men’s World Cup, Cannes is the most mediated event in the world, attended annually by more than 4,000 accredited journalists. Such mega-festivals sport budgets in the tens of millions of dollars.

On the other hand, small U.S. festivals with tiny budgets bring excellent independent American and foreign films to eager local audiences. Even Sebastopol, California (population 7,596), has a fine documentary jamboree.

A good film festival resembles a successful rock concert. It is, above all, a live event, with directors and critics on hand for post-screening debates. Film lovers spend hours queuing in eager anticipation. In 2013, an Indiewire critic waited in line for 90 minutes at Telluride to watch All Is Lost, with star Robert Redford in attendance. At 109 minutes, the movie itself lasted barely longer than the wait.

A David among Goliaths, Telluride combines elements of mega-festivals such as Venice and smaller, more intimate, events. With a population of just 2,319, the town welcomes, each Labor Day weekend, more than 3,500 passholders. Unlike the mega-events, however, Telluride forgoes red carpets, press conferences and prizes. Bucking trends, the festival doesn’t even announce its program in advance.

And yet, despite its Rocky Mountain remoteness, tiny Telluride has hosted the world, or North American, premiere of virtually every Oscar-winning Best Picture in the past seven years, including Argo (2012), 12 Years a Slave (2013) and Birdman (2014). Venice, Telluride and Toronto all take place in early September, competing with each other to host the most prestigious premieres. Early buzz at Telluride opens the fall season of North American award speculation that climaxes with the Oscars. So, major festivals confer capital — economic as well as cultural — on successful movies. Similarly, award-winning films bring cachet to the festivals that first project them.

Fortunately, would-be Oscar fare is not the only item on the menu at Telluride. The program always includes substantial helpings of documentaries, foreign films, shorts — works that may never receive U.S. distribution. Plus, crowds there discover revivals of forgotten classics, presented by the likes of novelist Salman Rushdie or avant-garde theater director Peter Sellars, who bring greater star power to the venues than the retrospectives themselves. A handful of beautiful pre-1930 silent movies unfurl with live musical accompaniment, breathing life into a lost art.

Without film festivals, our media landscape would be poorer. Little-known American documentaries and independent movies show aspects of our nation occulted by the mass media. International cinema reaches American shores at festivals more than anywhere else. If you’re interested in seeing how people live in other countries, turn off CNN and Fox News, and head down to your local film festival. If you’re lucky, you’ll catch Abbas Fahdel’s 2015 documentary Homeland (Iraq Year Zero), a five-and-a-half hour exploration of his family’s day-to-day life in Baghdad before and after the 2003 U.S. invasion, a vanished world heartbreakingly preserved on digital video. Homeland will have its North American premiere at the upcoming 2015 New York Film Festival, another jewel in the festival galaxy.

As the etymology of “festival” suggests, good film festivals are also fun. Imagine the satisfaction that comes from viewing movies by, for and about LGBT folks in the presence of hundreds of other LGBTs. Even if some of the movies spotlight outrageous discrimination, solidarity and community reign.

I spent a week this August in south-central France at the Lussas Film Festival, what many there call the “Woodstock of documentary.” More than 5,000 directors, producers, critics and students descended on the petit village of Lussas (pop. 823) for a week of 150 screenings, seminars, copious conversations and local cuisine. The documentaries explored PTSD among U.S. veterans of the occupation of Iraq, life and death among four generations of an Argentinian family, disenfranchised fishermen in the Azores islands and some more playful subjects, too.

Lussas is a festival mostly for young people; the twenty-something students slept in tents in open fields, while their elders paid to stay at modest accommodations. As in Telluride, the festival is the only game in town, so everyone hangs out together.

Admittedly, the world’s problems won’t be solved by watching documentaries in the French countryside. But doing so doesn’t make our troubles worse. At midnight on August 22, the annual Lussas adventure concluded its final, open air screening. Under a crescent moon, an animated documentary charted the nine-months’ gestation of France’s 2013 legalization of marriage for all. Vive la différence! Et vivent les festivals!

This article originally appeared on Huffington Post on September 8th, 2015.

After an October 2014 coup toppled the 27-year presidency of Blaise Compaoré, most thought the Panafrican Film and Television Festival of Ouagadougou (FESPACO) would be cancelled. Compaoré played a role in his own demise. When he proposed a constitutional amendment lifting term limits, which would have allowed him to run for President a fifth time, more than 1 million Burkinabés marched on the National Assembly, halting the vote by burning the building—and the adjacent Hotel Independance, where parliamentarians were lodged—to the ground. In the aftermath, the military took over and Compaoré was forced to resign, fleeing the country on a wave of popular dissent.

Though FESPACO organizers maintained that the show would go on, scant weeks before its opening no announcement had been made as to what films would be screening. When a friend posted a congratulatory message on my Facebook wall, I still hadn’t heard back on my submission. Skeptical, I visited the festival website and found an announcement listing my short film, Aissa’s Story, as an official festival selection. For years I had dreamed of attending FESPACO, the continent’s version of the Oscars that convenes biennially in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso. The fact that it happened every other year made it seem even more like a myth. Ousmane Sembene. Haile Gerima. Mahamat Saleh Haroun. These and many others had won the coveted Étalon de Yennenga prize, some from countries that didn’t even have cinemas. I had a hard time imagining myself walking in their footsteps.

It wasn’t until a few days later that I received an email—addressed to Sir Iquo Essien—that confirmed it, asking for a DVCam and Blu Ray of my film to be sent immediately to FESPACO. The theme of the 24th Edition, “African Cinema: Production and Distribution in the Digital Era,” reflected a major shift in festival policy. Digital films could be submitted, as opposed to only 35mm film prints, and the French subtitles requirement was relaxed, leading to a surge in Anglophone African films. ECOWAS had also announced a new prize for Best Female Director, promoting women’s roles in innovation and development. I accepted the invitation to attend, writing:

“Thank you for this letter. I will send the copies. I have explained several times already that I am a woman. Please be advised that I cannot use an invitation letter calling me Sir. I am Ms. Iquo B. Essien. Thank you.”

In short order, the festival organizers corrected my title and re-sent the letter. I hoped the small act might symbolize the death of a set of preconceived notions about FESPACO, namely: that it was a festival dominated by men, Francophone Africans, and established, as opposed to emerging, filmmakers. Some of these ideas had their roots in fact, given that Francophone Africans, unlike those in the British and Belgian ex-colonies, benefited historically from funding by the French Ministry of Cooperation.
These filmmakers used their art as a tool for reclaiming the image of Africa post-independence, as well as political and cultural autonomy. These goals converged with the 1969 creation of FESPACO and the Federation of African Filmmakers promoting production, distribution and exhibition—that were, at the time, primarily Francophone male endeavors, though Anglophones and women have since been invited to the table.

Now forty years later, there exist two strands of African filmmaking that, quite literally, still struggle to speak to each other. But then there are films like mine—a story about a Francophone African immigrant housekeeper, inspired by the very public journey of Nafissatou Diallo, directed by a woman of Anglophone African parentage—that sit at a curious nexus between all these. My hope was to create a truly universal, bilingual film that spoke to everyone. So I spent the five weeks leading up to FESPACO, with the exception of a few days in France for CinéSud, in preparation: designing posters and postcards, subtitling my film in French (and English), burning Blu Rays and DVDs, mailing my screeners to Ouagadougou, and checking my email every day for confirmation they’d been received.
Ultimately, when my film got lost in the mail, I was instructed to hand deliver it to the projectionist upon arrival—the thought of which made me anxious, since I had heard horror stories about screenings being cancelled altogether. Taking a deep breath, I burned several extra Blu Rays and, camera in hand, boarded a flight for FESPACO.

GETTING THERE

A few rows back, I spotted Ghanaian director Akosua Adoma Owusu sitting on the opposite side of the plane. We had met back in May at the African Film Festival New York run by veteran programmer, Mahen Bonetti. Adoma was a wunderkind of sorts, with dual degrees in art and film that she’d parlayed into screenings at venues as wide ranging as the Whitney Museum of Art and the Berlinale. She slid into one of the empty seats beside me and we passed the flight chatting and watching in-flight movies, one of which—Render to Caesar, starring Gbenga Akinnagbe and Wole Ojo—would be screened at FESPACO.

Eight hours later, after a fish and rice dinner, we landed in Morocco where a stone-faced control officer inspected my travel documents in a booth decked with a happy-face sticker that read: SMILE, YOU’RE IN CASABLANCA. It was a strange juxtaposition to his icy stare, flipping through my Nigerian passport looking for a visa.

“I don’t need one to travel to Burkina Faso,” I explained, both in English and broken French.

Visa-free travel was one of the perks of having an ECOWAS passport, although he was the fifth airport official I’d encountered who didn’t know that. Eventually he stamped my passport, motioning me down a walkway to hotel accommodations for our 16-hour layover.With vouchers from the travel office, Adoma and I dragged our bags outside into the chilly, clear dawn. Waiting for the hotel shuttle, we snapped pictures of the airport, sunrise, and lazy palm trees in the distance. Casablanca was a beautiful city. I wanted to see more of it than just the hotel, but ended up sleeping most of the layover away, before we boarded another plane for Ouagadougou.

We landed in Burkina Faso at midnight. Having lost Adoma in the passport check line, I wandered down to the arrivals lobby alone.  A swarm of hawkers and cabbies milled around outside, dimly illuminated by the neon red sign of the Aéroport International de Ouagadougou. Peering into the crowd, I scanned their faces looking for someone from FESPACO.

“Taxi?” a portly man in a plaid shirt asked, waving his hand toward the parking lot.

“Non merci,” I replied, wandering back inside.

All told, the entire trip had taken more than 30 hours. I was beyond exhausted. If someone didn’t show up soon, I was going to have a problem.
Sensing my desperation, a pretty, apple-faced woman in a batik shirt approached me.

“Are you here for FESPACO?” she asked.

“Yes,” I replied, breathing a sigh of relief.

Crossing my name off a list, she wheeled my luggage outside where I found Adoma standing with a group of people. Minutes later, we sat in the waiting room of an adjacent building watching a recap of the festival’s opening ceremony that we’d missed earlier that evening. The 5000-seat Palais de Sportes stadium overflowed with spectators who were regaled with a variety of performances by men on stilts, dance troupes, and Senegalese musician Ismaël Lô.

As the TV blared, a stream of women in the same matching batik shirts attended to guests with visa issues while the organizers dispatched hotel shuttles. I recognized at least a dozen people from our flight alone and a dozen more from the airport. The scope of the ceremony, plane tickets, hotels, and support staff defied comprehension, suggesting vast sums of money and/or government sponsorship.

Not only was the entire country of Burkina Faso seemingly involved in FESPACO, but every major African filmmaker, journalist, actor, and programmer as well—making it the largest festival I’d ever attended.
Soon they rounded us up for a shuttle to the Golden Tulip Hotel—a statuesque building that rose high above a lake at the edge of town. At the check-in desk, we received our room cards and wi-fi passwords, but no festival brochures. Speculating that the organizers would drop packets off in the morning, we said good night and rode the elevators up to our rooms.
Dropping my bags on the floor, I drew open the curtains and gazed out at the lake ringed with lights that set the water aglow. Even in the dead of night, the view was breathtaking. Removing my shoes, I collapsed into bed and fell into a deep, dreamless sleep.

DAY ONE

In the morning, I ate a quick breakfast at the hotel restaurant overlooking the swimming pool. Grabbing some fruit and two croissants, I sat down at a table with Djia Mambu, a journalist from Congo-Brazzaville, and Ayuko Babu, a distinguished gentleman who helped found the Pan African Film Festival. Before we could start a proper conversation, Adoma rushed in.

“Iquo, your film is playing at 11!”

“Are you sure?” I replied, glancing at the clock; it was past ten. I didn’t even know where the cinema was.

“I just saw the screening schedule. We might have to take a cab to the theatre, I don’t think there’s a shuttle,” she added.

Inhaling the fruit, I ran into the lobby where a FESPACO booth manned by a pair of twenty-somethings had appeared. Between them, they shared a single copy of the screening schedule and catalogue listing 134 films. We could copy it, they said, if we needed to. My film was showing at Cine Neerwaya in exactly 45 minutes—and none of us had any francs for a cab. While Djia changed money at the front desk, Adoma and I ran outside to the parking lot where the hotel taxi driver quoted an exorbitant 4000 francs. Appalled, we walked out to the main road where we waved our arms in the dry heat trying to hail one of the cheaper green taxis. Five minutes later, sweat trailed down my legs and still, even with Djia’s help, we couldn’t hail a cab. A trickle of cars passed by, but no taxis; we were too far off the main road.

Adoma and I left Djia in the street and went back to the parking lot to try and negotiate with the cabbie. We settled on 3000 francs, scooping Djia up as we headed downtown along the Avenue du Président Thomas Sankara—named for the slain leader whose radical, anti-imperialist policies cost him his life, many believe, at the hands of the now disgraced Compaoré. The road teemed with cars, buses, and fleets of motorbikes—the preferred mode of transport, used by a preponderance of women—and a small herd of goats on leashes, tugged along by a weather-beaten man in a cap and shorts. We sped past a string of embassies, schools, and the Museum of Music, all coated in a layer of dust blown in by the windy harmattan.

Their front gates were low and accessible, absent the barbed wire and shards of glass one might see in Nigeria. Missing also were the haphazard police checkpoints, set up every few kilometers with a plank of wood and a few nails. Traffic flowed along smoothly and, fifteen minutes later, we arrived at Cine Neerwaya without so much as a roadside squabble. I felt like I’d entered some kind of nirvana. There they were, post-revolution Burkinabés co-existing peacefully with a sense of order and direction.
It was Africa 3.0, something I’d read about in future-gazing books and blogs, but had yet to really experience. And film was right at the center of it—making this FESPACO 3.0.

Absent a festival badge, I talked my way past the security check and hand sanitizing station—where a man in a lab coat squirted a blob of clear liquid in my palm—over to a FESPACO official, who pointed me to the projectionist’s booth. At five minutes to 11:00AM, I burst in the door, finding several young men sitting calmly in the air-conditioned room. As one cued up the first film, the others looked at me quizzically, waiting for me to speak.

“Parlez-vous l’anglais?” I began tentatively, addressing the one closest to me.

“Yes,” he replied. I breathed a sigh of relief.

“I’m the director of Aissa’s Story. I have to give you the film!” I shouted, waving the Blu Ray in the air.

He calmly relayed the message to another guy who, holding up a DVD case, said he already had it.

“Oh, it arrived?” I replied, feeling both relieved and confused. Nobody had emailed me saying the film got here—a curious oversight. Thanking them, I left the booth and took a seat inside the theatre near Agbor Obed Agbor, a Cameroonian filmmaker whose short—Damaru, about a deaf girl longing for an education—was screening after mine. Having already met the year before, we greeted each other like old friends.

Glancing around the room, I noticed that most of the seats were empty; it was the first day of the festival and people were still arriving. The folks I saw were mostly filmmakers, with a few diehard Burkinabés sprinkled throughout the room. The lights went down and a film started up about a Haitian worker defending himself against a vicious Tonton Macoute. As the screening progressed, a theme began to emerge when four out of five films dealt with women’s issues such as violence, sexual abuse, and breastfeeding, in a story about a mother who stopped producing milk during the Ivorian Civil War. Why this was I didn’t know, but the strong effect on the audience was palpable.

When my film began, I realized something was gravely wrong: the French subtitles were missing. Then it hit me—the screener the projectionist had showed me earlier was not the French version I’d mailed a few weeks ago, but rather the English version I’d first submitted with my application. Despite our dogged attempts to get there that morning, I had still managed to botch the delivery. Thankfully, half of my film was spoken in French, but most of the important scenes were in English. I heard some whispers from the audience and felt their attention drifting. What a disaster, I thought, sinking deeper in to my chair. All the hard work I had put into subtitling the film had been for naught; I was disappointed.

When the lights came up, the emcee invited us down to the stage. Introducing myself, I apologized for not speaking French and thanked the translator, a wiry young man, for facilitating our discussion. Launching into my remarks, I noticed the translator whispering with the emcee. He didn’t seem to be listening to a word I said. I stopped. “Are you going to translate what I’m saying?” I asked, directly into the microphone. He nodded and, when I resumed speaking, continued his conference with the emcee over some discrepancy in his notes. By then, I had given up on trying to salvage any aspect of today’s screening. Waving my postcards in the air, I told the audience to see me afterwards, before the translator delivered a half-hearted summary of my comments.

In spite of the debacle, several patrons approached me with questions, and a reporter even pulled out a tape recorder for an impromptu interview. By the time I ran back to the projectionist’s booth, eager to trade out the English version of the film, the screeners had already been shuttled back to FESPACO headquarters. Running outside, Adoma and I hailed a taxi downtown. A police barricade blocked the road a half-kilometer away from FESPACO headquarters. In front of the metal bars, a long line of motorbikes sat parked along the road for as far as the eye could see. Makeshift kiosks sprouted up around them, selling everything from clothing and shoes to jewelry and crafts.

We hopped out of the taxi, walking through the barricade down to the main gate. There guards inspected our bags and health aides dispensed generous globs of hand sanitizer. Before us, FESPACO headquarters stood like a giant sculpture ensconced in the ground. A concert stage, cinema village, food stands, and sculpture garden surrounded the building, adjacent to an arcade of vendors complete with ATMs and a bouncy house for little kids.
At a glance I realized that, far beyond the myth I’d imagined, FESPACO was a vital, active cultural institution. I was impressed, though cautious, given the notable filmmakers who’ve denounced it for its organizational shortcomings—some of which I’d already fallen prey to on my first day alone. My breath still caught a little, though, just trying to take it all in.

Adoma and I went into the main building where we found two women sitting at a reception table. I explained to one of them, in broken French, that we were short film directors in need of festival credentials. She pointed us to a room—which we later discovered was for press credentials—that had a CLOSED FOR LUNCH sign tacked to the door. Thirty minutes became an hour became an hour-and-a-half and the office was still closed.
While waiting, we took photos of the hall of fame—a string of posters of all the Étalon de Yennenga winners lining the hallway—and selfies in front of the festival banner, making our way down to the projectionists office, where I turned in the French copy of my film, and the office of François Adianaga, head of FESPACO guest relations. I had emailed him the most over the past few weeks, and simply wanted to connect the face to the name.

The office was a beehive of activity and his assistant told us to have a seat, after which he left the room altogether and we found ourselves waiting for no apparent reason. So we left and went back to the other room where we were told that, since we weren’t press, we couldn’t get credentials. They sent us back down to Adianaga who, having long since returned, asked us why we had gone.

Fifteen minutes later, we left his office armed with our festival credentials, screening schedules, brochures, invitations—to events like the awards shows and closing ceremonies— tote bags, and meal tickets—perforated by the day and meal, to be used at a number of local restaurant—a crowning achievement for a day marked by confusion and misdirection. Later on, we sat outside for a meal of grilled fish and French fries at La Palmares restaurant set up under a tent on the festival grounds.

When it came time for the bill, a debacle ensued—set in motion by a drinks saleswoman who worried she would not get paid—that required a number of staff and patrons to explain, both in English and French, how to pay multiple vendors with single meal tickets. Suffice it to say, we paid and caught a cab back to the hotel. I lay down for a nap, awaking several hours later in a jetlagged daze having missed most of the evening’s films. Calling it a day, I posted some pictures on Twitter and turned the light out, eager for a proper night’s rest

THE FILMS

The rest of the week went much the same, rising early for breakfast, heading to screenings, and checking out events and awards shows in the evenings. Despite the hiccups of the first day, the screening schedule alone went a long way to smoothing out the rest of the week. I could plan the films I wanted to see and make time for events in the evening.

FESPACO is not just about films. It screens TV series, documentaries, student films, and animation as well. If you don’t speak or read a word of French, many of the films were incomprehensible; though some, this year, were subtitled in English. These resonated most with me (in no particular order):

Morbayassa, le serment de Koumba (Cheick Fantamady Camara, Winner Paul Robeson Prize for Best Diaspora Film):

Twaaga by Cedric Ido:

Des Étoiles (Dyana Gaye, Winner Best Female Director and Integration):

Chroniques Africaines (Marie-Christine & Alexandra Amon, Winner Best TV Series):

Run (Philippe Lacôte, Winner Conseil de l’Entente prize):

L’oeil du Cyclone (Sekou Traoré, Third Prize Winner for Feature Film, Winner Best Actress, Best Actor, and ECOWAS Intégration special Prize):

Miners Shot Down (Desai Rehad, First Prize Winner for Documentary):

I tried and failed to see Abderrahmane Sissako’s Timbuktu (FESPACO Winner for Best Set Design and Best Music), the controversial film about jihadists in Mali that received a 2015 Oscar nomination, taking home a staggering 7 Césars from France’s national film awards. On the first day it screened, hundreds of us gathered outside of Cine Burkina were told the theatre was already full, as the patrons who had watched the film before it refused to leave. It turned into a full-fledged altercation when local media pulled out their tape recorders and began questioning the officers at the door, declaring it an injustice.

Forty-five minutes after the film started, a diehard group of 20 of us remained at the door. Olivia Pope-style, I waited till I saw someone who looked in charge and, flashing my festival badge, shouted in English and French that I was a director in competition. The man looked alarmed, reluctantly admitting us into the theatre where we found patrons overflowing the seats and sitting on every inch of bare floor. In a certain light, it was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen: people of all ages, races, and nationalities clamoring to watch a film by an African director. But from where we had wedged ourselves into the room, we couldn’t even see the whole screen. Disheartened, I turned back (and didn’t return the following day, when I heard some arrived 6 hours early for the second screening).

Leaving the theatre, I heard there was a gala happening at the Prime Minister’s house. Though invitations were supposedly delivered to the hotel, the concierge seemed to know nothing about it. Taking a chance, I caught a cab to Ouaga de Mille—the suburbs, where most of the embassy buildings are—hoping there was a way to get in the door without one.

Flashing my badge again, the security let me in and I took a seat beside Adoma at a dinner table. The gala was a star-studded event with a five-course meal, speeches, performances, and a banquet table of dignitaries. Twenty minutes later, who sat down at the table beside ours?— Abderrahmane Sissako himself.

When there was a break in the program, we rushed over to meet him, swamping him with handshakes and photos. Sissako was an incredibly gracious human being, taking personal time with each of us. I reminded him about how, years ago, he had shown Waiting for Happiness to our NYU graduate film class. It was one of the highlights of my experience, topped only by meeting him that day. Walking back to my chair, I had to pinch myself to make sure it was real. I couldn’t believe that, after a disastrous attempt to see Timbuktu, I’d spoken one-on-one to Sissako himself.
It was all coming full circle.

EVENTS

The press, filmmakers, and patrons all seemed to have different schedules, some with more information than others. As a director in competition, I was invited to everything—including the VIP events, which required special invitations, though they sometimes arrived late, not at all, or after we’d already left the hotel. At one point, true story, I even had to talk my way past two guards at the Prime Minister’s residence to attend a festival gala.
Some events, like the Master Class on mise en scène, led by Sissako at l’Institut Supérieur de l’Image et du Son, were strictly closed door. Unfazed, I elbowed my way in, crashing a Q&A session (in French only) with film students from across the continent.

FESTIVAL ROUNDUP

My second screening of Aissa’s Story ‬went brilliantly. Cine Burkina was packed, the projectionist had the right copy of the film—I ran into the booth to check, leaving behind an extra copy—and I asked Djia to translate my remarks, so that I could communicate clearly with the audience.

After the screening, I was swamped by a barrage of patrons, students, journalists, programmers, and even a distributor. By the end of the day, I’d done several interviews. By the end of the week, I’d done additional video interviews for VICE and Al Jazeera America, and networked with executives from Canal+, TV5Monde, and all the major African film festivals. Programmers from London to Germany to Zanzibar expressed an interest in my film. Their festivals will help broaden my network, laying a strong foundation for my upcoming debut feature film. As far as screenings go, it was the most successful one I’d ever had, the effects of which will be felt for months and years to come.

Popular opinion held that the festival was put on so last minute that it was a wonder if happened at all. And though burning down the Parliament and Hotel Independance went a long way to securing the revolution, the absence of a central meeting place for filmmakers made networking more difficult. I had a hard time finding other directors, discussing my film, and planting the seeds for future collaborations.

It wasn’t until halfway through the week when we found out that many directors were meeting up after dark at La Foret restaurant (try their fufu and foutou sauce graine), where many of the winners ate dinner the night after the awards ceremony, before boarding our respective planes for home.

That’s really the magic of FESPACO: despite all of its hiccups, when it comes together the results can be quite magical. With a little more organization, the experience could have been a lot smoother for invited filmmakers. Although my Naija grit and French listening tapes came in handy, I had to talk my way out of far more sticky situations than I would have liked. It was not lost on me, however, that my badge conferred with it a set of privileges that festival patrons didn’t enjoy. More efforts definitely could have been made to include non-French speakers in the festivities, although the organizers provided excellent translators for key events such as the closing awards ceremony.

I’ve never before seen a closing reception with as much fanfare as FESPACO. Dignitaries walked the red carpet, some receiving a full military salute. Transitional President Michel Kafando was in attendance and guests watched performances from musicians and dancers. There were some predictable winners, like Sekou Traore’s L’œil du Cyclone, and others, like Hicham Ayouch’s Fievres (First Prize Winner Étalon de Yennenga), that were complete surprises. Some critics felt the selections were motivated by political above artistic concerns, calling into question the integrity of the jury.

Curiously, Sissako’s Timbuktu won none of the major prizes. And this year’s new Thomas Sankara prize, for a short film “celebrating the Pan-African creativity and the hope embodied by Thomas Sankara,” went to Tunisian director Leyla Bouzid’s Zakaria when Burkinabé director Cedric Ido’s Twaaga seemed like a certainty.

While Francophone men continued to dominate the awards, women directors and women’s themes have a strong presence in competition—with Dyana Gaye winning Best Female Director and Integration prizes for Des Étoiles—which shows that times are changing for the better. Several critics supported the idea of establishing an Audience Award, given that certain decisions made by the jury seemed out of step with popular sentiment. Additionally, I would suggest creating a forum for women filmmakers to network and collaborate, two activities that are key in fostering equity in the industry.

I applaud the inclusion of digital films, but the organizers must continually strive for a level of artistic integrity, rising above political considerations.
All in all, FESPACO was a whirlwind of screenings, Q&As, interviews, and VIP events, one of the most popular and important festivals I’ve ever attended. Like it or not, all the major players working in African film today were there, making it a festival that cannot be missed. I’ll definitely be back!

This article originally appeared on the blog Shadow & Act.

UNE NOUVELLE VIE (A NEW LIFE):

“Une Nouvelle Vie” (A New Life) is a short film about a first-generation African immigrant adapting to new American settings. The film won the Special Prize of the Jury at the Lycée Français’ Film Competition. This short film was made in collaboration with the French Heritage Language Program and students in the after-school program at Crotona International High School.

THE STAR FOOTBALLER: THE RISE, FALL, AND RISE AGAIN:

“The Star Footballer: The Rise, Fall, and Rise Again” is a film about an injured player’s fall from grace and about teamwork. This short film was made in collaboration with the students in the after-school program at the Jewish Community Center of Staten Island (Cornerstone Mentoring Workshop).

THE NEW GIRL:

“The New Girl” is a short film about bullying. This short film was made in collaboration with the students in the after-school program at the Johnson Center in Harlem (Cornerstone Mentoring Workshop).

I took one and headed downstairs to the theater, breezing past a giant Oscar statue to the check-in table where New York program director Patrick Harrison, a bespectacled man of color, greeted me.

“Are you a guest?” he asked, searching my face. It’s his job to know all the local members and I clearly wasn’t one, though I seemed interesting enough.

My short film, I told him, had screened here at the 2013 Student Academy Awards (SAA) semifinals. Having received an invitation for the Selma screening tonight, I couldn’t pass up an opportunity to watch the film before its release.

Patrick nodded, remembering my name, and asked what I’d been up to lately.

“I’m turning the short into a feature for my NYU Grad Film thesis,” I replied. As ambitious as it sounded, I had come to realize the more I said it out loud, the more attainable it seemed. He wished me good luck, waving me into the theater with just a few minutes to spare before the film began.

Walking down a long aisle past an audience of largely silver-haired, older white people, I took a seat near the front where five director-style chairs were arranged in a row. The Academy members stared at me, as people do, trying to figure out what my story was. Despite my long wool coat and jeans, I felt objectified, largely owing to my butterscotch skin, dreadlocks, and the berry-tinged lipstick I’d smeared on at home before leaving.

Every year at awards season, dozens of similar screenings are scheduled for Academy members to attend in anticipation of voting on the year’s best films. Nomination ballots are mailed out to active members in late December and, once the nominations are in, final ballots are mailed to decide the winners prior to Oscar Sunday.

Waiting for the lights to dim, I thought about that evening, now more than a year ago, when I jittered anxiously in the audience at the SAAs. The crowd brimmed with members, guests, and students each vying for a spot at the nationals, whose winner qualifies for a bona fide Oscar nom. Incliding, there were three of us NYU graduate students and one undergrad—Shanghai-bred Bruce Li, a young Brett Ratner of sorts with an eight-person entourage—who screened films that evening. Seeing our grad film chairman in the front row, I deflated, remembering the somewhat blistering reviews he’d given my early work. But the film played well and, at the reception, he told me how proud I should be, instilling hope that the $100K in student debt I’d incurred had somehow been worth it.

I made it into NYU on a long shot. My Nigerian parents relied on thrift stores and discount food programs to raise my sisters and me in an African immigrant community in Albany, New York. As a Stanford biology undergrad, I gravitated toward kindred creative, starving artist types who fell outside the mainstream. When I finally abandoned the med-school track and applied for film school, I was ill prepared for the smug privilege of Tisch School of the Arts—rich kids, famous kids, faculty darlings, and, in a category all by himself, James Franco. Broke, black, female, and African, I didn’t figure on any of those lists, but was solidly marginalized simply because I did not have a film background.

I lasted two weeks before I took a year off to buck up, enrolling with the following year’s crop of students. After that first year, I was so broke that I had to take off another three years just to work before coming back to finish my last two years.

Leaning back in my chair, I smiled, buoyed by the realization that my hard work had brought me to this theater on my own merit. I had screened here before and was adapting my short into a feature—called Aissa’s Story, loosely inspired by the Dominique Strauss-Kahn case—for which I had won a Spike Lee Production Fund grant. Sundance or not, I thought, I should be proud of myself. I repeated it like a mantra until my friend Tammy arrived, snapping me out of my reverie before the theater went dark and the film began.

I had no clear expectations of Selma going in, though I had heard about its Golden Globe nomination for Best Director—the first for a black female—and had seen it on a few Oscar short lists, namely Manohla Dargis’s Best Movies of 2014. I was skeptical, though, given that Richard Linklater’s Boyhood was on the list too and, though impressed by the directorial feat, I had tried and failed to enjoy it on more than one occasion. Sometimes with biopics, their nominations have more to do with the film’s epic scope and cultural significance, and the fact that the actors’ tour-de-force performances dwarf anything anyone else could have possibly made that year.

But when the film opened up on a shot of Martin Luther King, Jr. disagreeing with his wife Coretta about wearing an ascot to his Nobel Peace Prize award ceremony, I was immediately spellbound by the intimacy of the scene—the quiet, loving way Coretta, played by Carmen Ejogo, and Martin, played by David Oyelowo, looked at each other.

No less captivating was the cut from the ceremony to a group of schoolgirls skipping down the 16th Street Baptist Church basement steps in Birmingham, Alabama, mere moments before a bomb went off and killed them. (On a singing tour with my college a cappella group, I had visited the church where Addie Mae Collins, Cynthia Wesley, Carole Robertson and Denise McNair were murdered.)

Watching the concrete, wooden beams, and debris explode and settle around their lifeless bodies dropped me deep into my bones, where I stayed throughout the final strains of a freedom song over the end credits. To say that Selma went beyond my expectations is to propound the falsehood that I could have even imagined it. Having seen Ava Duvernay’s Middle of Nowhere—though interesting and promising, definitely an early director’s effort—I would not have envisioned the near-perfect storytelling of Selma two years later. It had the nuanced, dynamic performances of Oyelowo and Ejogo; the boldness to include a scene about King’s noted infidelities, the kind of messy truths that make our heroes human; the luminous cinematography of Bradford Young who, if he hasn’t received one yet, deserves an Oscar nomination. Then there was the brilliant way the documentary footage was handled, interwoven in a way that was never expositional, but served to lift a fictionalized narrative to a kind of operatic truth.

It was a transformative experience, a story of multi-racial coalition coming together to make the civil rights movement and societal change possible in the face of state-sanctioned violence and deadly opposition, embodied by the bloody confrontation between marchers and state troopers on the Edmund Pettus Bridge—named, to this day, after a former Confederate brigadier general and Alabama state senator, who was the Grand Master of the Ku Klux Klan.

In the face of this hate, we watched hopeful children milling amongst the adult marchers, theologians and faith leaders, weary travelers smiling and eating lunch at the side of the road, and octagenarians who walked the 50 miles from Selma to Montgomery. We cut out of the doc footage with King’s voice, in the speech he delivered on the steps of the Alabama State Capitol building.

The film ends with King still alive, disallowing us from wallowing in the tragedy of his ultimate death, but rather urging us to live in the transformational glory of the march and the positive change that came of it, the slain leader’s true legacy.

Selma was divine. I could hardly contain myself when the director and cast took the stage for a Q&A after the screening.

On her directorial motivation, Ava said: “My father is from Lowndes County, Alabama, which is something that David [Oyelowo] didn’t know about as he was advocating for me [to direct the film]. So I know that place, and it was really about imbuing the script with a sense of place and time. That’s why we open up with the four little girls. I feel it’s important not to sanitize that time in history. To not just have the physical violence, but the emotional violence as well.”

David Oyelowo added: “We now live in a different world. We live in a world where a black woman can direct this movie. We live in a world in which Oprah Winfrey is on that set as a producer. One of the things I loved about this movie is for Oprah to symbolically take on the role of someone who, fifty years ago, wouldn’t be allowed to register to vote—and right now she could buy that registration office a billion times over.”

What really resonated for me in the film was how the march echoed the protests going on across the country right now. If you just changed the references in King’s speeches, he’d be speaking to the exact moment we’re in now, with the slight riff of cops killing kids in the park, the preschool to prison pipeline, mandatory sentencing minimums, and the mass disenfranchisement of black and Latino men. And releasing the film on the heels of the Ferguson decision, at a time when the nation has been drowning in an unending tide of state-sanctioned killings—of Mike Brown, Eric Garner, and Tamir Rice among others—Selma could not be more timely.

After the Q&A, we reconvened at a nearby restaurant for dinner and conversation. My friend and I put our coats down and palmed glasses of white wine, making light conversation with the other guests. Being a second-year thesis student, I’ve met my share of directors and actors, and found the entire cast to be warm, heartfelt, and approachable, though Common had me starstruck. After asking the origin of my name, David even gave me a hug from one fellow Nigerian to another.

The room was fairly narrow and we soon bumped elbows with Carmen Ejogo, with whom we chatted at length about the film and life in New York. As we wound down, a rather tall, elderly gentleman tapped me on the shoulder. He had gotten up from the dinner table to introduce himself, he said, because everyone at his table kept telling him what an amazing job I’d done in the film. I gave him a puzzled stare, throwing my glance back toward the table where his friends grinned eagerly at me. But what was this man talking about?

I do not look anything like anyone in the film, although, by virtue of our dreadlocks, I could be said to bear a passing resemblance to Ava. That said, it would have been obvious, given my conspicuous absence from the Q&A, that I was not in the film. And of course there was the problem of my dress, a pair of jeans, while Carmen, in a ball gown, and the rest of the cast were in their Sunday best. I simply did not now what this man could possibly be thinking, other than all the black and brown faces in the room were the creative help.

“I wasn’t in the movie,” I replied, with a kind, almost apologetic smile. His eyebrows knit together as he squinted, examining me, his face gradually relaxing into a smile. “Well then, what brings you here?” he asked, extending a hand. I told him I was a film thesis student, working on a feature, before he drifted quietly away.

Tammy thought it was great that people were mistaking me for an actress—I must look good enough to be on camera. But my discomfort at the glaring mistake only deepened when it happened again later that night, as we sat at a table eating fancy egg rolls and prawns, when a younger man in a cowboy hat wrapped his arm around my shoulder and boomed a hearty congratulations. This time I made no attempt to be warm and apologetic, replying, “For what?” His eyes glazed over as he tried to dig his way out of an obvious hole—though he repeated congratulations, I suppose, simply for my existence.

The entire debacle reminded me of the Student Academy Awards when, though my picture and name were in the program, and projected onto the wall during the closing reception, at least half a dozen members asked who I was, what I did in my movie, or congratulated me on my performance in it. Even more puzzling was the fact that my lead actress, whom I look nothing like, was also present at the event, sometimes standing right next to me.

I was pretty angry over how hard it was for people to tell us apart, and I remember my sister saying it was to my credit that the Academy members could not imagine a young, attractive black woman as a director. I exceeded their expectations, challenging their most deeply-held assumptions about what people like me are capable of. Perhaps that is true, but what concerns me is what it says about the hope for films by people who look like me, who congeal into an indistinguishable brown swill at the bottom of the mainstream cup—simply because whiteness assumes a kind of individualized identity that rises above the homogenized, monolithic other into which the rest of us fall.

I have not finished my feature yet—nor the memoir I’ve been writing for a decade, but I digress—which is perhaps why nobody knows my face. But it becomes a problem when a group of older white people, most of whom have long passed the point of creative relevance, watch, vote, and decide which films in the entire culture and world get applauded. Some of them are literally falling asleep in the theater, while a significant portion of the rest can’t even distinguish the faces of the black and brown people they’ve been watching speak for two hours on camera.

I hope that Ava gets an Oscar nomination for Selma, a film that offers a platform for black actors who otherwise wouldn’t get work to hone their craft, and I wish the film and others like it could also be a platform to change the Academy. Because you walk into this room, you see meet people, and you understand why subtitled and experimental films often don’t do well at the Oscars, why black-cast or -helmed films frequently get excluded. To get in the Academy, you have to be nominated for an Oscar (or make a significant contribution to motion pictures) and be invited to join. And in a field with fewer opportunities for “others” to receive those nominations, we simply don’t get to join—much like the Jim Crow voting practice, explained in the film, whereby Blacks could only register to vote if someone who was already a registered voter could “vouch” for them, a de facto denial in majority black counties.

Most “other” filmmakers don’t have anybody to vouch for them, or rather, they don’t have access to the kinds of opportunities that gain them acceptance into the club. Though the Academy does not release demographic information, a recent survey by the Los Angeles Times found that, of its 6,172 voting members, 72% are men and 28% are women, and 89% of the most recent 271 invitees were composed of white non-Hispanic film practitioners. These numbers are disturbing when you consider that, by the year 2043, Americans will be living in a majority non-white nation. Among all the other very real inequities in housing, jobs, employment, healthcare, education, and wealth, the Academy is one of those lingering bastions of inequity that seems rather tone deaf to the changing culture.

To be perfectly blunt, the kind of work that millions of protestors agitate for—the dismantling of racist institutions in society, of which the Selma marches are a prime exemplar—is the same work that needs to happen within the Academy. (Read Chris Rock’s take at The Hollywood Reporter.) And as a film student, I see that’s exactly the kind of work people don’t talk about as more and more frustrated, young creative talent turns to alternative means of distribution to get their stories told. Don’t get me wrong, those platforms are important for circumventing the gatekeepers that have historically silenced so many “other” voices. And yet without this type of institutional activism, nothing will ever change.

I would be remiss, however, in painting Academy members with a monolithic brush, discounting the multi-cultural coalitions that were the very foundation of the Civil Rights movement itself and made the event, gathering all of us together, possible. One of the great joys of the evening was meeting the ebullient Wynn Thomas, production designer on most, if not all, of Spike Lee’s early work. And meeting the documentarian Rob Richter, who was a CBS reporter during the marches of 1965 struggling with whether or not to attend and receive backlash from his employers. He didn’t attend and ultimately regretted it, spending the better half of his adult life making politically incisive documentaries, the latest of which charts the famous legal trial of Huey P. Newton, and how a black jury foreman changed the course of American justice. Hearing Mr. Richter speak firsthand about his experience of that time, and the life’s work it inspired, gave me hope that not all of the Academy members are completely out of touch with the culture and the plight of black and brown people.

So why am I writing this? The world is so complicated and it’s hard to make sense of this moment now. All things being equal (which they’re most certainly not), I’m excited for this time in which we’re seeing so many films, like Selma, helmed by black women directors this year. And though one film can’t change the world, those of us who take up the challenge of working within the system, and give people of color or women or immigrants or non-English speakers jobs on feature films, are doing important work.

I had always dreamed of working in Nigeria—not just because it’s my cultural homeland, but because it seems to offer the kind of access to which many “others” trying to break into Hollywood will never gain. But having experienced Selma and the Academy last week, I realize that the entire film ecosystem should be opened up. Though I have never wanted to sacrifice my life to change a system as archaic as Hollywood, I recognize that it may be a call that I and many others have to answer.

The rain settled into a light drizzle as I boarded the subway to Brooklyn at midnight with a belly full of prawns and white wine. I leaned against the window, closing my eyes as my head swirled with questions: What is the touchstone that will galvanize people to change the Academy? As a black, Nigerian-American woman, I will do what I can to change the Academy, but should I want to be a part of the institution I’m fighting to change? I know that my dreams, like Dr. King’s and Ava DuVernay’s, are still possible. After all, I was there that night doing the work. And as Dr. King always taught, no matter what, the universe will eventually bend towards the work of justice.

This article originally appeared on Gawker.com on December 27, 2014.

Nevertheless, all of them still respect their grandmother with whom they engage in a hide and seek game imbued with humor. Her authority is safe even if everything is happening behind her back. The seedy character of Uncle Youl (who, on screen, disappears in clouds of smoke) – honest during the day, deceitful at night – is here to remind us that adults are the ones making war and using children for their own ends.

What is the point of bringing back such obvious questions? Because it is still very current in this day and age to deconstruct conflicts. Because it is important in a world that has lost its marks, to look with humanism at the “déshumanisation” resulting in the violence which has stained for more than ten years the area from where Cheick Fantamady Camara is and other regions in Africa and in the world.

No need to thrust forward great arguments, rather have a few individuals stand out in the midst of the televised images of refugee camps, eager to live their youth but bearing on their shoulders the weight of their displacement, of the world drifting, of the loss of their close relations. And let them live, laugh, speak, dare, search and lose themselves. It’s like a Nicolas Ray short, or like Rebel Without A Cause, with, as a new addition, the lust for quick money, all in all, a very current issue.

If Cheick Fantamady Camara’s second short film makes you really feel that the world is weighing you down, it’s because it bears the great mark of a film director – a mark already perceptible in his first short, Konorofili. He masters everything: the narrative benefits from the choice of cameras, sends a thrill of multiple shots, resonates with the gun shots as much as with the characters’ jokes and most of all, like in Konorofili, takes shape through the subtle way in which Camara catches and directs motion, the expressive movements of his actors or of the camera that he uses exempting his shot from lingering. For here nothing stays still. Everything follows the tragic rhythm of these young people made in the image of the Conakry gangs (cf. Mathias, Le procès des gangs by Gahité Fofana and Kiti, Justice en Guinée by David Achkar) adamant in their teenage recklessness and a miniature version of the world, blowing up because they cannot live and killing themselves softly.

SOURCES: – AFF, Inc. – Through African Eyes – Conversations with the Directors – Volume 2, BONETTI Mahen and SEAG Morgan (Editors), 2010, African Film Festival, Inc. and Printinfo JV LLC, Yerevan, Armenia, p.50.

A woman struggling to forget the atrocities she’s experienced reunites with her husband. A single mother striving for assimilation in the suburbs takes in her activist sister. And the host of a popular anti-government radio show, finds his estranged father on his doorstep. Stories of love amidst the emotional fallout of political terror in New York’s Haitian community.

Running time: 1:33
Language: Creole, English, Haitian & French With English Subtitles

SPECIAL TREAT:
Q&A with Director Patricia Benoit and actors Carlo Mitton and Thierry Saintine following the 7:10 show on Friday, Nov 21.

Q&A with Director Patricia Benoit & actor and acclaimed writer Edwidge Danticat following the 7:10 show on Wednesday, Nov 26.

More info and tickets here: https://www.facebook.com/events/1578822712346255/

Simultaneously anchored in the real world and tuned into an imaginary one, Mati Diop’s work offers a resolution to what is perhaps cinema’s oldest divide: the split between documentary observation (as practiced by the Lumière Brothers and their globetrotting band of cinematographers) and fictive creation (as seen in the magic films of George Méliès). In a statement typical of her enigmatic style, Diop has said of her hybrid style “nothing is true and nothing is false.” Instead, her films never announce what parts are fictive or documentary, and reside ambiguously between the two. In this space, which is perhaps unique to cinema, her characters find themselves rooted in one place and dreaming—deliriously, melancholically, and always vividly—of another. – Genevieve Yue (Film Comment, April 2014)

FILMS:
Atlantiques
Directed by Mati Diop
(Senegal / France, 2009, 15min, video)
The story of a young stowaway from Dakar who gives up his youth for a new life on the other side of the endless water. Sitting by the campfire, a boy from Dakar named Serigne tells his two friends the story of his sea voyage as a stowaway. Not only he, but everyone in his surroundings seems to be continually obsessed by the idea of trying to cross the sea. His words reverberate like a melancholy poem. A story about boys who are continually travelling: between past, present and future, between life and death, history and myth.

Mille Soleils (A Thousand Suns)
Directed by Mati Diop
(Senegal / France, 2013, 45 min, video)
Mille Soleils is Diop’s beautiful, haunting portrait of Magaye Niang, the lead actor of  the 1973 film Touki-Bouki. One of the most important films of African cinema, Touki-Bouki was directed by the filmmaker’s uncle Djibril Diop Mambéty. Set in Dakar and Alaska, A Thousand Suns portrays Niang as a “sad-eyed cattle herder who embodied the seminal role in Touki-Bouki forty years ago…[and]…is now filled with longing for the vanished past and a future that was never meant to be.” (Andréa Picard)

FILMMAKER:
Mati Diop
Mati Diop (b.1982) lives and works in Paris as a director and an actress. She studied in the advanced degree program at Le Fresnoy (National Studio of Contemporary Arts) and le Pavillon (research laboratory of Palais de Tokyo).

Her films include the short works Last Night (2004),  Atlantiques (2009), Snow Canon (2011), Big in Vietnam (2012)  and Mille Soleils (2013). Diop’s 2006 video Le Artificiel-Expedition was featured in group exhibitions at le Pavillon, Louis Vuitton Centre and the Cultural Center of Delhi. Between 2002 and 2010, she regularly worked with different theatre directors producing collaborative video and sound works. Her work has been screened in numerous venues and festivals including the Cinémathèque française, Cinema du Réel, Venice Film Festival, Indielisboa, New York Film Festival, Toronto International Film Festival, and CPH:DOX. Her films have received major awards at festivals such as FIDMarseille, IFF Rotterdam, Ann Arbor Film Festival and the Festival du nouveau cinema Montreal. She has received retrospectives at BFI London Film Festival, the Museum of the Moving Image in New York, the Viennale, and Valdivia International Film Festival in Chile. Mati Diop has received great critical acclaim for her acting, playing the female lead in Claire Denis’ 35 Shots of Rum (2008). She has also acted in Antonio Campos’ 2012 film Simon Killer.

MODERATOR:
Genevieve Yue
Genevieve Yue is an assistant professor of Culture and Media at Eugene Lang College, The New School. She is co-editor of Discourse: Journal for Theoretical Studies in Media and Culture, and her essays and criticism have appeared in Reverse Shot, Grey Room, The Times Literary Supplement, Cinema Scope, Artforum.com, Film Comment, and Film Quarterly.

For more information, visit: http://flahertyseminar.org/thousand-suns-mati-diop/