Haile Gerima on "The Politics of Black Cinema"

On Thursday, March 30, highly acclaimed Ethiopian filmmaker Haile Gerima spoke at Mount Holyoke College on "The Politics of Black Cinema." A recent retrospective of Mr. Gerima's work at the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art singles out the artist as "one of the original contemporary black independent filmmakers."

Of Gerima's more recent works, Sankofa, twenty years in the making, deals with the African Diaspora and the roots of slavery. Opening at the 43rd International Film Festival in Berlin in 1993, and earning top honors in competitions in both Milan and Burkina Faso, Sankofa has been hailed by critics, and Mr. Gerima has been identified as a major figure in film.

In his talk at Hooker Auditorium, Mr. Gerima addressed the ongoing, long-standing negative influence of European culture on African filmmaking and looked at issues of culture and art within the African American community as well.

Please note that the accompanying text represents a transcription of Mr. Gerima's remarks and as such is an imperfect document which includes a number of phrases which have been omitted because they were not audible or discernible to the transcriber. For the same reason, a number of names may be misspelled. While this inconvenience is regretted, the text should serve as an excellent vehicle to approach Mr. Gerima's thoughts on politics, culture, and the cinema.

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