The Austin Film Society “African Diaspora” film retrospective is a powerful opportunity to appreciate Pan-Africanist creativity under the cold realities of slavery, imperialism, colonization and neo-colonialism and its universalistic ramifications. It provides a unique vision and aesthetics on the cultural agency of people of African descent bypassing geographic and linguistic boundaries for the purpose of tackling fundamental issues of race, identity, violence, memory and belonging. The results are models for considering universal human conditions because the protagonists of these diasporic narratives are confronting the trials and experiences of displacement which do not apply solely to Africans. This cinema, therefore, must be situated in the glare of people struggling for human rights, self-knowledge, self-responsibility, self-respect and dignity under unique forms of pressures such as slavery, genocidal dictatorships and others processes of forced deterritorialization.
The feature term diaspora is drawn from the expulsion of Israelis out of their land by the Babylonians in 586 BCE and by the Romans in 136 CE. It was later adopted in Black studies programs to describe the global dispersion of Africans throughout the world, principally engineered by the global slave regime. It is important, moreover, to recognize that no diasporic community, however, manifests all of these characteristics or shares them with the same intensity and identity with its scattered ancestral kin.
-- Olivier Tchouaffe, PhD in Radio-Television-Film, University of Texas
Director Charles Burnett has finally been given the opportunity to edit his early film to his own satisfaction rather than to the demands of an insensitive distributor in the 80s. » read more
Throughout the history of slavery in the Western hemisphere, some individuals escaped to remote areas to achieve freedom, even if just for a short while. In Brazil entire villages (quilombos) were created by self-liberated men and women » read more
Despite the grinding poverty of his village in Martinique, young Jose lives happily with his elderly grandmother. One of his favorite pastimes is to go to the hut of an old neighbor, who tells him wondrous tales from Africa.
Africa’s cultural ambassador to the world, Youssou N’Dour, traces the pathways of music brought to America by slaves from West Africa and transformed into blues, gospel, and jazz.
