An evening with Manthia Diawara — KADIST — Meeting — Slash Paris

Past: Thursday, January 18, 2024

Attend the screening of “Sembène: The Making of African Cinema”, in echo to the exhibition “A Convening of Civic Poets”.

The projection will be followed by a discussion between its director, Manthia Diawara and Hoor Al Qasimi, president and director of Sharjah Art Foundation, also co-curator of our current exhibition at KADIST Paris.

Made by Manthia Diawara and Ngugi wa Thiong’o in 1994, this rich documentary is a portrait of Senegalese filmmaker Ousmane Sembène (1923-2007). Following him from the Pan African Film Festival in Ouagadougou (Burkina Faso) back to the streets of Dakar and his Galle Ceddo home at Yoff (Senegal), Sembène reflects through conversations with Diawara on the aesthetics and philosophies of his films and novels, further engaging with the role of the artist in society and the politics of decolonisation.

Ousmane Sembène’s films deal with the socio-economic and postcolonial issues facing his country. His works are often articulated through incisive parables, using words, images and poetry to draw public attention to social and political issues on the African continent.

Manthia Diawara (1953, Bamako, Mali) is a filmmaker, cultural theorist, and art historian based in New York City, whose body of work has made an enduring contribution to the field of Black and African diasporic cultural studies. His capacious scholarly and creative practice grapples with the politics of postcolonialism, decolonization, migration, and globalization.

His essay films and documentaries amplify the voices of seminal Black theorists and artists, such as Édouard Glissant and Ousmane Sembène, and shed light upon the erosion of African livelihoods, traditions and ecosystems by global modernity. As founder and editor of the journal Black Renaissance/Renaissance Noire, Diawara centers Black genius in all its manifestations, resisting any singular conception of Blackness or monolithic representation of Black identity.

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Hoor Al Qasimi (1980, Sharjah, United Arab Emirates) is President and Director of Sharjah Art Foundation, an independent public arts organization which she established in 2009 as a catalyst and advocate for the arts, not only in Sharjah, UAE, but also in the region and around the world.

She has curated major exhibitions for the Foundation and other international institutions, including the critically acclaimed Sharjah Biennial 15: Thinking Historically in the Present (2023). In addition to her role at the Foundation, Al Qasimi also serves as President of the International Biennial Association, President of The Africa Institute and President and Director of the Sharjah Architecture Triennial. In 2025, she will serve as Artistic Director of the 6th Aichi Triennale.

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