Negritude: A Dialogue Between Wole Soyinka and Senghor

Film

by Manthia Diawara

Details

English and French / 2015 / 59mins / Documentary / USA, France, Germany and Portugal

This imagined dialogue between Lepold Sedar Senghor, one of the founding fathers of Negritude, and Nobel Laureate, Wole Soyinka probes the relevance of Negritude, from the decolonization and independence movements to the contemporary artistic and political scenes of nationalism, religious intolerance, multiculturalism, the exodus of Africans and other populations from the South, and xenophobic immigration policies in the West.

Trailer

About the Director

Manthia Diawara

A native of Mali, Manthia Diawara is a writer, film producer, cultural theorist and art historian. Diawara received his education in France and later traveled to the United States for his university studies. He has been published widely on the topic of film and literature of the Black Diaspora. Diawara has taught at the University of California at Santa Barbara and the University of Pennsylvania.  He is the author of We Won't Budge: An African Exile in the World (Basic Civitas Books, 2003), Black-American Cinema: Aesthetics and Spectatorship (ed. Routledge, 1993), African Cinema: Politics and Culture (Indiana University Press, 1992), and In Search of Africa (Harvard University Press, 1998).  He has published widely on the topic of film and literature of the Black Diaspora. Diawara also collaborated with Ngûgî wa Thiong’o in making the documentary Sembene Ousmane: The Making of the African Cinema, and directed the German-produced documentary Rouch in Reverse. Learn More