Manthia Diawara will provide an analysis of the films of Abderrhamane Sissako and Haroun Mahat Saleh in the context of the production strategies of Arte TV.

Thursday, February 23, 2012
4:00 PM - 6:00 PM
6275 Bunche Hall
Los Angeles, CA 90095

Professor Manthia Diawara is a writer, filmmaker, cultural theorist, scholar and art historian.  He is a professor of comparative literature at New York University and his areas of research/interest include Black American film, literary and cultural studies, and black film in Africa and Europe.  Professor Diawara is also director of NYU’s Institute of African-American Affairs and affiliated faculty in the Africana Studies Program, which offers a multicontinental and interdisciplinary approach to the study of black culture, literature and politics.

A native of Mali, Diawara received his education in France and later traveled to the United States for his university studies and earned his PhD from Indiana University.  He has taught at the University of California at Santa Barbara and the University of Pennsylvania.  He is the author of We Won't Budge: An African Exile in the World (2003), Black-American Cinema: Aesthetics and Spectatorship (1993), African Cinema: Politics and Culture (1992), In Search of Africa (1998), and African Film: New Forms of Aesthetics and Politics (Prestel, 2010).  He has published widely on the topic of film and literature of the Black Diaspora. Diawara also collaborated with Ngûgî wa Thiong’o in making the documentary Sembene Ousmane: The Making of the African Cinema, and directed the German-produced documentary Rouch in Reverse.  Other films include Maison Tropicale and Edouard Glissant: One World in Relation.

NEW APPROACHES TO AFRICAN CINEMA

Monday African Seminar Series (MAAS)

UCLA African Studies Center, Co-sponsored by the Mellon Postdoctural Program "Cultures in Transnational Perspectives."

Faculty Coordinator: Francoise Lionnet

MASS Winter 2012

What does African cinema contribute to a better understanding of global aesthetics and to film studies in general? What is specific about the field of African visual media and what are some of the new conceptual and interpretive issues that confront its scholars today? The series showcases the work of three critics who will take turn focusing on questions of memory and trauma (Sheila Petty), fantasy and science fiction (Jude Akudinobi), power, control, and biopolitics (Akin Adesokan).

The historical and the social, gender and the environment, and the serious new challenges posed to the poetic imagination by neoliberal authoritarianism are some of the topics that will be explored. This is a unique opportunity to learn more about established and emerging filmmakers, from Senegal, Guinea-Bissau, Angola, and Kenya, who draw from rich multilingual traditions and challenge viewers to rethink their relation to global genres.

Monday, February 6, 10367 Bunche Hall

“Sites of Memory in Sub-Saharan African Cinema”
Sheila Petty, University of Regina

Tuesday, February 21, 10383 Bunche Hall.

"Expanding Horizons: Pumzi, Science Fiction and African Cinema"
Jude G. Akudinobi, UC Santa Barbara

Thursday, February, 23, 6275 Bunche Hall

“The Arte Wave”
Manthia Diawara, NYU 

Monday, February 27, 10383 Bunche Hall

“Framing Biopolitics: Jo Ramaka's Cinema of Power”
Akinwumi Adesokan, Indiana University

Monday, March 12, 10383 Bunche Hall

"Azmari in Hollywood"
Leelai Demoz, Filmmaker 

Cost : Free and open to the public; pay-by-space and all-day parking ($11) available in lot 2.

www.international.ucla.edu/africa

Sponsor(s): African Studies Center, Co-sponsored by the Mellon Postdoctoral Program “Cultures in Transnational Perspectives”