A remarkable celebration of African cinema
At this year's New York African Film Festival, we saw films united by key thematic concerns, some of them quite unexpected.
Culture
Hollywood’s 419 Scam
Africa is apparently hot in Hollywood, but can Hollywood be trusted with African stories?
Running is work
What a documentary film on running can tell us about Ethiopia's development trajectory.
Scenes from a Dry City
A film about Cape Town’s water crisis raises profound questions about the character and stability of South Africa’s post-apartheid trajectory.
Religion and conflict in Cameroon
Traditional, Islamic and Christian leaders are all being caught up in the conflict over secession in the Southern Cameroons.
The radical afterlives of Frantz Fanon
A documentary film takes Fanon's ideas out of the past and tracks the ways in which his ideas are resonating with today's young across the planet.
Judgement Day
A commentary on how Egyptian society treats the abandoned, disabled, or those suffering from ailments and thus deemed a risk.
When the ‘President of the rich’ met the ‘Black President’
What does Emmanuel Macron's visit to Fela Kuti's New Afrika Shrine say about what happened to Fela Kuti's legacy in Nigeria.
Decolonizing the museum
How should Belgium's Africa Museum address its colonial past?
There are no bees in Dakar
Dedicated to the memory of the writer’s friend: the rebel and genius, Binyavanga Wainaina.
Our man of the people
Binyavanga Wainaina was a writer who not only produced seminal work, but also contributed to and shaped the African literary tradition into what it is today.
The falsification of history
The charge that Mohandas Gandhi was a racist is doing the rounds again. His stay in colonial South Africa fuels those claims.
South African homophobia goes to parliament
Are postapartheid norms against open homophobia in party politics eroding in South Africa?
The resilience of culture
The film 'The Sound of Masks' explores dance, memory and the meaning of life, ancestry, culture and political struggle in postcolonial Mozambique.
Morning yet on another day of indaba
A response to Panashe Chigumadzi’s essay, “Why I’m No Longer Talking To Nigerians About Race."
Nollywood Tackles #MeToo
Director Dare Olaitan’s Knock Out Blessing (2018), is nothing less than a meditation on rape culture.
Singing truth to power
When Ugandan police imprisoned Bobi Wine in his own home, the singer-turned-lawmaker used the internet, music and multiple languages to craft a call for solidarity between civilians and security forces.
When Achieng met Ellen
Ellen DeGeneres wanted an African story. Achieng Agutu obliged. Don’t hate the player, though, hate the game.
Arabic literature and the African other
Racist, anti-black stereotypes persist in Arabic literature. It reveals a racial anxiety and othering of Africa among celebrated Arab authors.
The ruins of a mining economy
The physical and psychic ruins of colonial mining practice in a small town in Liberia.