Voices of African Cinema

Description

Voices of African Cinema
Program curated by Tsitsi Dangarembga

24 February — 5 April 2025
Tsitsi Dangarembga invites the filmmakers Akuol de Mabior and Milisuthando Bongela, two of the most vibrant cinematic voices today, to present their debut documentaries and to speak about the imaginaries and languages of contemporary African cinema.
The eye behind the camera is unseen but, offering a particular representation of the world, it determines how we look at and perceive what is being recorded. Today, the white European male is no longer the only one behind the camera. Day after day, the world of cinema embraces more and more textures and filters, more voices and gazes offering different stories. One example is the Zimbabwean writer and filmmaker Tsitsi Dangarembga who, for more than thirty years, has been participating in African-made films and promoting films made by African women.

However, most African women filmmakers are still relegated to the fringes of international festivals. Rarely do they get to open a prestigious international festival. Neither do they occupy any prominent position in the listings of European cinemas and, as Dangarembga also points out, they frequently appear as just a token percentage of participants in African festivals. Who are these filmmakers? What are their languages?

Tsitsi Dangarembga invites two women representatives of contemporary African cinema, Akuol de Mabior from South Sudan, and Milisuthando Bongela from South Africa to speak about their work and the films being made by African women today.

De Mabior is the author of No Simple Way Home (2022), which was premiered at the Berlinale, and Bongela of Milisuthando (2023), which was presented at the Sundance Film Festival. Both films stand out for giving a personal, poetic, almost intimate feel to the stories of their respective countries, thus speaking in their own individual way about the big stories of history and creating new possibilities for remembrance, memory, and identity within and beyond the frontiers of the continent.

This program, curated by Tsitsi Dangarembga, takes place within Resident CCCB, with the collaboration of Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC) and supported by Fundació Privada MIR-PUIG.

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