Director of photography on Julie Dash’s Daughters of the Dust, John Akomfrah’s documentary Seven Songs for Malcolm X and Spike Lee’s Crooklyn, Arthur Jafa has crafted an oeuvre that also encompasses music, philosophy and science-fiction art. He had a wide-ranging conversation with Black Film Bulletin co-founder June Givanni in London in February 1993, excerpts from which are reproduced here.
Writer and filmmaker Tambay Obenson blazed a trail in early 2000s US film criticism, founding the prolific Black cinema blog Shadow & Act and going on to serve as IndieWire’s principal Black cinema staff writer until last year, when he established Akoroko – a media platform dedicated to discourse around African film and TV. As the birth centenary of Ousmane Sembène comes to an end, Obenson muses on the monumental legacy of a filmmaker widely hailed as the ‘father of African cinema’
It would seem that Hollywood has discovered Africa again. But how does all the new American content about Africa’s past compare to a previous generation of African-made movies on the same topic?