Futures of African Screen Worlds

Since June 2019, the “African Screen Worlds: Decolonising Film and Screen Studies” project based at SOAS University of London has engaged with established and emerging film scholars, mostly based in Africa, to interrogate, celebrate, and document the work of Africa-based filmmakers. Through a wide range of collaborative activities including but not limited to workshops, seminars, screenings and filmmaking, the research team has encouraged use of the concept of “screen worlds” as a heuristic device that recognises the multiple sites and contexts of film production and consumption on the continent which have so often been marginalised by scholars working in the Euro-American film studies paradigms. Now in its fifth year, the African Screen Worlds project will culminate in a forthcoming edited book titled Contemporary African Screen Worlds, which is in production with Duke University Press and will be published in 2024. This volume has drawn together study of the film production practices enabled by new technologies and the entrepreneurial skills of the men and women behind them, who work against the odds to create unique and inspiring screen worlds.

The proposed stream envisages up to five pre-constituted panels based on the research that forms the core of the edited book, but will also encourage conversation around the futures of screen cultures that continue to emerge from the film and media ecosystem in African contexts. The panels are expected to enable the volume’s contributors and our audiences to discuss how we have collectively theorised the concept of “African screen worlds” and to share and set agendas for future research in our overlapping, interdisciplinary fields. We also hope that the panels will open up avenues for more collaborative work with existing partners (and especially Africa-based practitioners) and also to forge new scholarly relationships across the UK and the world in order to extend the theorising of the intersections of screen cultures and digital technologies from the least-researched corners of the world.

Stream convenors:
Lindiwe Dovey, Añulika Agina, Michael W. Thomas
SOAS University of London