It was a few years after the eve of Senegal’s independence that the first film made by an African was produced, as a way of offering an African account of Black struggles and living conditions. Ousmane Sembène viewed cinema as a more powerful medium for conveying African realities because it does not require literacy to grasp its message, making it a more effective tool for explaining the lived realities of Africa. A similar approach can be observed in the work of Alain Kassanda, especially in his documentary Colette and Justin, which not only revisits the historical context surrounding Patrice Lumumba and his death, but also dismantles claims often associated with Africans that are in fact inherited from colonialism, such as the non-schooling of girls. In light of the above, film is not only accessible to all social classes but also represents a rupture with Eurocentric narratives about Black people. It instead contributes to a Black world-making project in which Black subjects assume full responsibility, using cinema as an epistemological tool to reveal Black history, struggles, and ways of life. Both historically and in more recent years, several important filmmakers such as Mati Diop, Alain Kassanda, John Akomfrah and many more have made significant contributions to correcting narratives about Black people by offering perspectives rooted in the experiences of peasants and colonized subjects.
By framing cinema as an epistemic practice, this panel calls for papers that engage with ongoing debates on how African and Afro-diasporic films produce knowledge that exceeds archival, linear, and colonial forms of sense-making, in order to present lived histories grounded in the experiences of those who have lived and continue to live these realities.
Please send your 200-word abstract in English to sawuni@crimson.ua.edu ( Sawel Awuni) and to jmasmah@ad.unc.edu ( Joel Asmah) , along with the title of the paper, your email, your institutional affiliation, and a brief one-paragraph bio (100-word). Please send your submission by March 12. Thank you!
