Mati Diop’s documentary Dahomey, Golden Bear at the 2024 Berlin Film Festival, will kick off the series from 25 October.
Highlights include an onstage discussion with acclaimed filmmaker and artist Sir John Akomfrah, who represents the UK at this year’s Venice Biennale, and celebrated Malian director Abderrahmane Sissako who won the Palme d’Or in 2014 for Timbuktu on 2 November. The discussion, moderated by film curator June Givanni, will explore their impactful careers and artistic journeys as they discuss identity, migration, and cultural clash in cinema.
As part of Film Africa, a symposium on 26 October will address film restoration and restitution. Key participants include Didi Cheeka (Nigeria), an archivist and researcher known for his work on African film archives; Pedro Pimenta (Mozambique), a renowned producer and archivist; Cecilia Cenciarelli from the Cineteca di Bologna, who has overseen major restoration projects of African films; and Aboubakar Sanogo, an expert on African film heritage and a key figure in the African Film Heritage Project (AFHP) and FEPACI, archivist and filmmaker Mohamed Challouf (Tunisia). The symposium will be moderated by June Givanni, a pioneering international film curator and founder of the June Givanni PanAfrican Cinema Archive.
Organised in collaboration with SOAS, two panel discussions will explore the African European experience in the UK and France. The roundtable discussion Words and People (26 Oct) will critically examine the history and significance of the terminology used to describe the diasporic condition in France and the UK. The panel will be chaired by Olivette Otele, professor at SOAS, and include award-winning Nigerian-British writer Irenosen Okojie and Hélène Neveu Kringelbach, a social anthropologist at UCL.
The Words and Objects roundtable discussion (2 Nov) will gather Elikya Kandot, director and curator of Boulogne-sur-Mer’s museums, Jacqueline Roberts, Chief Executive and co-founder of SV2G, an African and Caribbean Heritage organisation, and Dr Renie Chow Choy, historian and expert in heritage and colonial history. They will explore the concept of a ’circulation of worlds’ (Achille Mbembe), which fosters a cosmopolitan consciousness and a vibrant cultural imagination, alongside Françoise Vergès’s notion of a ‘programme of absolute disorder’, which critically examines the Universal Museum model.
The French Institute and Film Africa have teamed up to present Film Africa Classics, a unique opportunity for audiences to watch digitally restored gems of African cinema at Ciné Lumière. Several films have been restored thanks to the support of the Africa Film Heritage Project, a partnership between the Federation of Pan African Filmmakers (FEPACI), Martin Scorsese’s The Film Foundation’s World Cinema Project along with its affiliate archive, the Cineteca di Bologna, and UNESCO and the Cycle Cinemateque Africa.
Venue
Institut français, 17 Queensberry Place, London SW7 2DT
Contact
Natacha Antolini
natacha.antolini@institut-francais.org.uk / 020 7871 3521