Manthia Diawara: Non-Aligned African Cinema. From Sembène to Sissako

Manthia Diawara (NYU) Non-Aligned African Cinema. From Sembène to Sissako Moderator: Jana Ndiaye Berankova October 19, 2023 6–7:30 p.m. Auditorium of TCM UMPRUM Mikulandská 134/5 Prague 1 Organized in the framework of UMPRUM Visiting Artist Studio 2023/24 “East-South: Transnational Exchanges between the Central and Eastern Europe and Africa.” The project is funded by EU. Manthia Diawara was born in Bamako, Mali, and received his early education in France. He later received a PhD from Indiana University in 1985. Prior to teaching at NYU, Diawara taught at the University of Pennsylvania and the University of California at Santa Barbara. Much of his research has been in the field of black cultural studies. Diawara has sought to incorporate consideration of the material conditions of African Americans to provide a broader context for the study of African diasporic culture. An aspect of this formulation has been the privileging of “Blackness“ in all its possible forms rather than as relevant to a single, perhaps monolithic definition of black culture. Diawara has contributed significantly to the study of black film. In 1992, Indiana University Press published his African Cinema: Politics & Culture and in 1993, Routledge published a volume he edited entitled Black-American Cinema. A filmmaker himself, Diawara has written and directed a number of films. His 1998 book In Search of Africa is an account of his return to his childhood home of Guinea and was published by Harvard University Press. Diawara is the editor-in-chief of Renaissance Noire, a journal of arts, culture, and politics dedicated to work that engages contemporary Black concerns. He serves on the advisory board of October, and is also on the editorial collective of Public Culture.