"Expanding Horizons: Pumzi, Science Fiction and African Cinema"

Tuesday, February 21, 2012
4:00 pm - 6:00 pm, Bunche Hall Dept. Room - 10383

Free and open to the public.

Contact
African Studies Center
(310) 825-3686
africa@international.ucla.edu

New Approaches to African Cinema
African cinema, given its originative ethos as a revolutionary cinema, has largely favored ideological contestations and ‘social realist’ paradigms of representation. As demonstrated by the film 'Pumzi' (Wanuri Kahui, Kenya, 2009), contemporary African cinema has evolved from the foundational… Show more predilections to richly diverse conceptual, thematic and aesthetic registers.

With this film and, notably, engaging the unwieldy genre of science-fiction, Kahui extends African cinema’s penchant for the provocative by posing its fascinating narrative as a parable for and cautionary tale about contemporary global concerns. Thus, through the film’s evocative post-apocalyptic realms, she explores questions of gender, power, humanity, scientific inquiry, resource control, environmental sustainability and, crucially, Africa’s future.

Lecture by Jude G. Akudinobi, UC Santa Barbara.

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