Tuesday,
November 11 at 6pm
Scribe Video
Center Producers’ Forums
Manthia
Diawara: In Residence
Rouch
in Reverse and Who’s Afraid of Ngugi
 As
filmmaker, cultural theorist and art historian, Manthia Diawara
has had a major impact on the programs of Scribe
Video Center. During his tenure as Associate Director of the
Center for Study for Black Literature at the University of Pennsylvania
he partnered with Scribe to create the Issues in Black Cinema
screening and discussion series – introducing Philadelphia audiences
to filmmakers Marlon Riggs, theorist Wahneema Lubiano, and the
works of Charles Burnett. He is also responsible for helping
forge natural collaborations between scholars and filmmakers
in the production of documentaries that have strengthened both
the art of the academy and the scholarship of indy historical
documentaries films.
Diawara’s
own work as a filmmaker has documented the cultural giants of
our time (Sembene
Ousmane: The Making of African Cinema);
and his African cities project (Conakry Kas, Bamako
Siki Kan) has presented a view of a modern and post-modern
African that is rarely seen in mass media. As part of Scribe’s
25th anniversary celebration, we are very pleased to have Manthia
Diawara in residence for the Philadelphia premiere of his most
recent documentary Who’s Afraid of Ngugi?
Rouch
in Reverse
dir.
Manthia Diawara, 1995,
UK/US, video, 52 mins, b/w, French and English w/ English subtitles
In
conversation with French ethnologist/filmmaker, Jean Rouch,
Diawara places Rouch's films in the context of the on-going
struggle of Africans to construct their own vision of modernity.
Reception
at 7pm
followed
by Who’s Afraid of Ngugi?
dir.
Manthia Diawara, US/Kenya, 2006, video, 83 mins, color
Who’s
Afraid of Ngugi is
about
the acclaimed author’s return to Kenya, with his political activist
wife Njeri, after years of exile. As they are welcomed home
by joyous and hopeful crowds, they also must cope with those
who still find their revolutionary words and deeds threatening.
Producers’
Forums are supported by the National Endowment for the Arts,
Philadelphia Cultural Fund, the Pennsylvania Council on the
Arts and the Independence Foundation.
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