African Archives: What Next? is the title of the conversation that will bring together representatives from a variety of institutes and film archives, as well as Alain Sembène, son of Ousmane. At the centre of the discussion, moderated by Cecilia Cenciarelli, will be the urgency for a profound recognition of African film heritage and the responsibilities for its conservation.
The Senegalese actuality films rediscovered in Dakar in 2017 by the Ministère de la Culture et du Patrimoine Historique, which conserves the newsreels of independent Senegal’s first information service, will be seen for the first time outside of the country. It is a collection of exceptional documents made by filmmakers such as Paulin Soumanou Vieyra and Georges Caristan, important figures in the history of African cinema. Also not to be missed is our appointment dedicated to the Gaumont Catalogue and Cineteca di Bologna project to preserve the work of Albert Samama Chikli, the Tunisian pioneer of cinema and photography to whom Edizioni della Cineteca has dedicated a fundamental volume curated by Mariann Lewinsky, which will be presented in Piazzetta Pasolini on Wednesday 28 at 7pm.
Nella sezione “Documents and Documentaries”, Barbet Schroeder will introduce Général Idi Amin Dada: A Self Portrait, an extraordinary document on the folly of power, given it is the depiction of Idi Amin Dada that the bloodthirsty Ugandan general and dictator had made of himself. Schroeder, together with Régine Vial and Alexis Dantec, will then hold a cinema lesson to reflect on present-day Uganda and to celebrate sixty years of Les Films du Losange, which he co-founded in 1962 with Éric Rohmer.