The 21st edition of the National Traveling Series is comprised of eight films presented under the theme of “Modern Days, Ancient Nights: 50 Years of African Filmmaking.” Using Ousmane Sembène’s Black Girl as an initial marker of mainstream, African cinematic recognition, this year’s edition of the National Traveling Series traces the first generation of pan-African artists and activists who used cinema as a platform to project their ideals, namely of an autonomous, exuberant nation and people, ready for action and a socio-political status equal to their European counterparts. Decades later, a new generation continues to use film in inventive and fascinating ways — unpacking entrenched ideas of masculinity, domesticity, and invoking dialogue about the persistent struggle for upward socioeconomic mobility.

Within this dynamic, styles and genres are reshaped: narratives coalesce with broader pop culture and more insular vernacular traditions; old ways of communication overlap with an increasingly interdependent digital era. To follow Sembène’s legacy is to follow the ever-changing, kaleidoscopic paradigm that is African cinema, and its continual commitment showing the world the dimensional, complex ways that African nations matter.