This in-person event will be livestreamed (Click here to Zoom in)
This presentation is drawn from my recent book on Black Girl (Bloomsbury/BFI Film Classics, June 2025). To give you a sense of the general direction of book, I think about this film as a map on which one can trace Sembene’s career, simultaneously moving backwards into his literary career and moving forwards into his groundbreaking filmic career. A key question emerges from this consideration: if Black Girl could be considered the very spark that ignited the entire field of African cinemas, how far might this map extend? I frame Black Girl as Sembene’s most consequential film and as a film that potentially maps out the future of African cinemas (in which we currently live). Specifically for this presentation, I will focus on the film’s sonic frames and its visual echoes. I will begin with the film’s use of sound and voice (the sonic frames) and then I will discuss the film’s legacy in the contemporary by way of visual frames and visual echoes.