Senegalese Archival Film Project: West African Film Heritage (working title)
- Hakimah Abdul-Fattah and the Center for Experimental Ethnography
- Center for Experimental Ethnography
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Project Support Grant
Opening still from Les Actualités Sénégalais, 1966. Courtesy of Janus Films.
Senegalese Archival Film Project: West African Film Heritage includes a screening, panel discussion and film preservation workshop of four recently restored Senegalese film newsreels from the 1960s and 70s. The films feature remarkable coverage of the first and second Black World Arts Festivals in Senegal and Nigeria; Senegalese independence ceremonial collaboration with Korea; and the former Senegalese president and Negritude poet, Léopold Sédar Senghor’s travels to the Caribbean (Martinique, Guadeloupe, and Haiti). These films offer an unprecedented look at a critical period of artistic and political history in West Africa and the Black Atlantic World through the legacy of the global Negritude movements and independent struggles of the 1960s. The footage has only recently been made available through the Senegalese Department of Cultural Affairs and Cinematography, and through an audiovisual archive restoration project of independent artists and archivists Marco Lena and Tiziana Manfred. Following an initial screening in the spring, the Senegalese archival film project will continue in the Fall with hands-on workshops.