Mmabatho Thobejane and Christian Rossipal in conversation with Lukas Brasiskis

Since its inception in 1998, CinemAfrica has been the most important Nordic festival to screen films from the African continent and diaspora. The regular festival took place this fall October 10–16, 2021, in conjunction and collaboration with the Afro-Swedish History Week. From March 17–20, 2022 CinemAfrica held a special retrospective edition at Zita in Stockholm, during which, for the first time, a filmmaker was invited to curate the program. Together with Mali-born director and film scholar Manthia Diawara who visted Sweden as Guest Artistic Director, CinemAfrica Retrospective Edition 2022 focused on films that rediscover or “remix” history. During this curated and shorter edition of the festival, classics from the ‘60s, ‘70s, ‘80s, and ‘90s were screened side-by-side with films from the new millennium. The older films included highlights from previous CinemAfrica festivals, while the new films were concerned with film history by radically reimagining it. In parallel with the program at Zita, CinemAfrica organized a seminar on Édouard Glissant at Stockholm University and a series of Safi Faye and Sarah Maldoror screenings together with the cinematheque at the Swedish Film Institute. The edition was programmed by Manthia Diawara, CinemAfrica programmer Christian Rossipal, and the CinemAfrica Program Group.

In this recorded conversation, curator and CinemAfrica Program Group member Mmabatho Thobejane and CinemAfrica programmer Christian Rossipal join e-flux’s Lukas Brasiskis​ to discuss this year’s CinemAfrica Retrospective Edition, as well as the films selected for e-flux audiences.

The conversation is part of e-flux Video & Film’s special feature of CinemAfrica Retrospective Edition 2022 titled “To Dig Where You Stand,” presenting a two-week screening of For Personal Reasons (1973) streams from Aptil 4–18 alongside The Invisible People (1972), two short films by Madubuko Diakité streaming from Monday, April 4 through Monday, April 18, 2022.

Watch the films here.

This program is part of the series Festival Forum on e-flux Video & Film, presenting collabrations with established and emerging moving-image festivals from around the world.

Mmabatho Thobejane (she/her) is a curator, producer, and writer currently based in Stockholm, Sweden. She graduated from the University of Cape Town with a BCom (Finance and Economics) in 2016 and a BA(Hons) in Curatorship in 2017. She received a Masters in Curating from Stockholm University in 2021. She currently splits her time between being the process leader and curator at Grafikens Hus, for the project Samlande Tankar/Collecting Thoughts, and as a producer at MDT, located at Skeppsholmen, Stockholm. Her curatorial practice focuses on centering Black creative practices and her writing practices centers and excavates Black Indigenous knowing, sense, and unfolding. She is a member of the CinemAfrica Program Group.

Christian Rossipal is a Ph.D. candidate in Cinema Studies at Tisch School of the Arts, New York University. Christian’s research and teaching interests include, among other things, migrating minor cinemas and the media infrastructures of violence and coloniality. His work has been published in Film Quarterly, The Global South, and Routledge Key Issues in Cultural Heritage, and he has forthcoming articles in the Journal of Cinema and Media Studies and the anthology Entangled Legacies of Empire: Race, Finance & Inequality. Rossipal is a member of the artist-activist collective Noncitizen and a programmer at CinemAfrica.

For more information, visit www.cinemafrica.se, or contact program@e-flux.com.