Pan-African Cinema

This Winter Quarter program at Doc Films is planned in conjunction with a series of exhibitions on cultural Pan-Africanism taking place at the Art Institute of Chicago. These include the major thematic survey Project a Black Planet: The Art and Culture of Panafrica on view at the Art Institute through March 30. The show includes a commissioned mural by The Otolith Group that composites and compares the films of Senegalese directors Ousmane Sembène and Djibril Diop Mambéty, giving a point of departure for our program as well with a feature and lesser-known short from each. Cinema has been essential to popularizing and circulating Pan-Africanist ideas, not least by demonstrating the modern and contemporary cultural achievements possible in Africa. Beyond individual films, these achievements resonate in the spread of cinema infrastructure, particularly when it gathers audiences and generates conversations. The Pan-African Film and Television Festival (FESPACO), held biannually in Ouagadougou since 1969, gives a famous example; for another one can cite the numerous international queer film festivals organized since the 1990s in Johannesburg, Gaborone, Kampala, and elsewhere. While by no means comprehensive, this selection of films from the 60s to now offers an additional angle from which to view the ideas and achievements of Pan-Africanism. The final film in this series, the genre- and geography-bending Soleil Ô, will be screened directly ahead of Panafrica Days (March 5-8), a citywide program of talks, shows and events, most of which are free and open to the public.