Biafra in the film archives
What personal and collective memory is evoked when we encounter films from a historical period?
Culture
What happens to football dreams when they die
For the Star Boys, a West-African performance collective based in Antwerp, Belgium, the dream of playing professional football in Europe found its revival in theatre.
The Biafran Immigrant
The playwright Mfoniso Udofia is trying to debunk the “typical” understanding of Africa, and specifically Nigeria, in her work.
My favorite images: Magee McIlvaine
My photographic work is and always has been deeply personal to me. The majority of my childhood was spent in Tanzania, Kenya, Zambia, and the Democratic Republic of Congo. I grew to be comfortable with being marked as different, whether in Lusaka or in Washington D.C., and found hip hop as a point of common ground, as a way […]
What’s missing from feminist readings of Nollywood romantic comedy ‘Isoken’
You are bound to be inundated by all manner of readings of “Isoken,” Jadesola Osiberu’s new Nollywood rom-com, the majority of them feminist. Those readings will recapitulate society’s pressure on single women. They will critique the near-universal acceptance in Africa of marriage as the crowning achievement of a woman. They will point out subtle and blatant patriarchies. They might miss the inexplicable, self-inflicted assumption […]
How do you write about a flawed film?
The vivid cinematography of "Waithira," a film about Kenya, aside, the author would have preferred more knots to be tied and a little less untethering.
For us, Zimbabweans, South Africa is home
We consider ourselves an indispensable and integral part of its national life, because it is our home, writes a Zimbabwean scholar.
Biafra as memoir
By volume, the most significant body of writing on Biafra is neither history nor fiction, but memoir.
Nigerians: Gays, as long as they’re not our gays, are okay
Reflecting on the April 2017 visit of openly gay CNN business news presenter Richard Quest to Nigeria.
Against the romance of study abroad
Undoing neocolonial power relations that benefit US higher education institutions at the expense of their, mostly global south, “partners.”
#Fallism as public pedagogy
Fallists draw on scholars and activists like Fanon and Biko, and concepts like intersectionality, to weave together a decolonial framework.
Friends in a Ship
"It was a lifetime performance of lies and false living. I played the role of a homophobic straight guy while I craved to hold the hands of a guy. I worshipped at the temple of homophobes while I prayed for a man to call my own."
Decolonizing philosophy
We must make a genuine attempt to Africanize the curriculum at the continent's universities.
Museums as Sites of Struggle
The exhibition 'Goede Hoop: South Africa and the Netherlands from 1600,' in Amsterdam, is like making your way through a hall of mirrors.
Africans want in on Virtual Reality
New artistic possibilities are boundless for 360° film as the technology becomes more accessible.
Abdullah Ibrahim’s ‘tawhid’
Ibrahim was drawn to Islam and the Black Power movement. The latter, especially, was liberating with its expansive definition of blackness that included coloureds like him.
Dakar’s African Renaissance
A Kenyan scientist wonders how Senegalese found ways to blend African spirituality with Islam.
James Baldwin on Film
The latest entry of the brilliance of James Baldwin on film, "I Am Not Your Negro," lays bare the fiction and terror of race in American life.
The liberating power of transgressive film genres
Jordan Peele's 'Get Out' should be seen as part of the Afrofuturism genre, which offers physical and mental liberation through supernatural or non-realistic means.
The great opus of “Small Bobby”
Ranjith Kally (1925-2017), a legendary photographer, documented South African Indian life in famed magazine Drum.