Manthia Diawara

Personal Info

Known For

Directing

Known Credits

0.3806

Gender

Male

Birthday

19-Dec-1953

Age

(73 years old)

Place of Birth

Bamako, Mali

Also Known As

NO INFO PROVIDED

Manthia Diawara

Biography

Manthia Diawara is a Malian writer, filmmaker, cultural theorist, scholar, and art historian. His essays on art, cinema, and politics have appeared in The New Times Magazine, LA Times, Libération, Mediapart, and Artforum. He is the author of two acclaimed memoirs: In Search of Africa (Harvard University Press, 2000) and We Won’t Budge: An African in the World (Basic Books, 2008). He has published several books on African and African American cinema. Diawara’s notable films include An Opera of the World (2017), Negritude: A Dialogue between Soyinka and Senghor (2016), Édouard Glissant: One World in Relation (2010), Maison Tropicale (2008), Rouch In Reverse (1995), AI: African Intelligence (2023), and Angela Davis: A World of Wider Freedom (2024).

Credits

Rouch in Reverse (1995) Character: himself
Malian filmmaker and New York University professor, Manthia Diawara critiques visual anthropology through the work of Jean Rouch.

Praise Song (2021) Character: Self
“In 2015, Jason Silverman and Samba Gadjigo released the acclaimed feature documentary SEMBÈNE!, on the life and career of Ousmane Sembène. For the following short documentary, the filmmakers have assembled footage from interviews that were not included in the original film, including musician Youssou N’Dour, activist and author Angela Davis, author Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, filmmaker Clarence Delgado, and filmmaker and scholar Manthia Diawara” (Criterion Collection).

An Opera of the World (2017) Character: Himself
In An Opera of the World, Malian scholar and filmmaker Manthia Diawara reflects upon the refugee crisis and the relationship between Europe and Africa. The film revolves around a 2008 performance of Bintou Were, a Sahel Opera, by Zé Manel Fortes with a libretto by Koulsy Lamko, in Bamako, around which Diawara builds a story about migration, interweaving interviews with documentary and archival footage. In the course of the film, one crosses into the world of opera from the tradition of sung wisdoms and sentiments, which has characterized West African culture for centuries. If opera is often understood as an über-European art form—the Gesamtkunstwerk invoked by Richard Wagner—Diawara chooses to meditate on its movement or migration as opposed to its expansion or totality. What happens when opera moves south, from Europe to Africa, just as so many people from that continent are moving north, in search of better lives?

Manthia Diawara on 'Black Girl' (2017) Character: Self
Conducted in 2016, this interview with filmmaker and cultural theorist Manthia Diawara (“African Cinema: Politics and Culture”) analyzes Ousmane Sembène’s 1966 film.

Manthia Diawara on 'Borom Sarret' (2017) Character: Self
In this 2016 piece, filmmaker and cultural theorist Manthia Diawara (“African Film: New Forms and Aesthetics and Politics”) addreses the significance of Ousmane Sembène's debut film.

AI: African Intelligence (2023) Character: Self
AI: African Intelligence explores the contact zones between African rituals of possession within traditional fishing villages of the Atlantic coast of Senegal and the emergence of new technological frontiers known as Artificial Intelligence. Considering the confluence of tradition and modernity, Diawara questions how we could move from disembodied machines towards a more humane and spiritual control of algorithms. Could Africa be the context of emergence for such improbable algorithms?

A Letter from Yene (2022) Character: Self
In Senegal, Yene was traditionally a seaside town with many fishermen and farmers but has in recent years been troubled by coastal erosion and urbanisation. In conversation with the town’s community, Manthia Diawara explores how their lives contribute to the undermining of their shared environment.

Manthia Diawara

Personal Info

Manthia Diawara

Biography

Credits

Our Work is

Anime | Movie