Dr. Maja Figge and Prof. Dr. Christine Hanke on the circulations of African militant cinemas
Media records
Abstract
- Abstract
- In this episode, Cluster fellow Dr. Maja Figge talks with her host Prof. Dr. Christine Hanke about her research that focusing on the notion of circulation. During her fellowship, Figge scrutinized the transtemporal bonds between militant African cinemas and Afro-diasporic post-cinemas, a research that contributed to her recent book project, a collection of essays entitled “Black (Post-)Cinemas: Genealogies, Practices, Aesthetics”.
People & roles
Origins & context
- Title
- Dr. Maja Figge and Prof. Dr. Christine Hanke on the circulations of African militant cinemas
- Language
- English
- Podcast series
-
Cluster Conversations
- Date
- September 27, 2026
Rights & access
- Extent
- 31 minutes, 31 seconds
Identifiers & sources
Further details
- Episode number
- 14
Full text
- Transcript
-
[music]
Speaker 1: Cluster Conversations, a podcast by Africa Multiple.
Speaker 1: Welcome to another episode of Cluster Conversations. My name is Kristina Hanke. I am professor of digital and audiovisual media at Bayreuth University and member of the research section Knowledges in the cluster of excellence Africa Multiple. And I'm happy to welcome Doctor Maya Figge today who is fellow, has been fellow since some months this term. Maya Figge is, I would say, one of the most well-known German academics dealing with media and film theory and postcolonial and antiracism. I would put it like that, if you agree. Yeah, thanks for joining us today. We would like to talk a bit about your project you're following up here. Maybe you just tell us a bit what have you been doing here, what's your main topic and how is it linked to your former work?
Speaker 2: Yeah, thank you, Kristina. During the fellowship here at the cluster, I work on a book project. I try to prepare the manuscript of a long ongoing project that I've been working on mainly by writing articles on the transtemporal bonds between militant African cinemas and Afro-diasporic post-cinemas. And it's called, the book project itself is called Black Post-Cinema Genealogies Practices Aesthetics. And in the book and also that work that I do here at the cluster, I take the coincidence of the recent proliferation of artistic and academic work on and with the archives of militant cinemas of the nineteen sixties and seventies motivated, I would say, as they are by present political urgencies and the coincident of those, this return to the archives with the discourse on post-cinema both occurring around twenty ten as a starting point to explore the centrality of circulation in both of them. And circulation because this is the this year's topic of the cluster, but also really in order to make a claim how they are genealogically linked to both through this practice of circulation. And with regard to the prior, my prior work, I can say, well, in my dissertation, I didn't so much work on African media or Afro-diasporic media, but I did work on German cinema, but with a focus often on nineteen fifties Western cinema, but it was always intended to write a history of this decade with regard to the presence of black people in Germany, Africans, Afro-Germans. And thinking through this presence with regard to the cinema and how the notion of Germanness was established through these films. And so during this time, I also, for quite some years, I was part of a DFG research group on Germany and Black diaspora. So I've been dealing with topics of Black diasporic practices, presences and knowledges for quite some time. And it's also maybe linked in that sense that it's also my interest in history of knowledge through cinema by looking at films, right? So taking films as knowledge and also making films as knowledge productions or even theory depending on the films. I mean there's a big argument about films being theoretical not only in film philosophy, but also maybe in essay film. But even more so really through thinking through certain knowledges in the way how can they be
Speaker 1: aesthetically and politically and technologically advanced through film maybe. So that maybe would be to frame it a little bit. Yeah, maybe I could add, as far as I am knowing your work quite well, that you also have been introducing or drawing on literature from the global south since the beginning of your academic works, so to say, more than ten years. You have been one of the first German scholars really always drawing on theories from the global south. That's maybe besides the films you're drawing on, also another focus which is founding your research work as far as I understand. If you speak about knowledge production and your new project, the book project you were talking about, I would be interesting to hear a bit more about the subject of your research, militant African cinema. Tell us more. What is that and which actors, which countries are involved and how far can films or filmic practice be militant?
Speaker 2: I will do that in a sec. I just wanted to add to the question of working with theories and scholarly work from the global south is maybe also an attempt to really take this project of decentering media and film studies or provincializing them really serious. And also being trying to think of that in a historical perspective really, that's really important to me because I really think especially with regard to film that there, I mean, there's this work has been going on for decades, I think at least thirty years, and but it hasn't been recognized really in the German context. So that's also one of my interests in doing that by working with those references, right? But then also with regard to African militant cinema, maybe where do I start? I can start maybe with the question of militant cinemas, what does it mean? It means different things in different contexts. Mostly it had been used in the Francophone context, cinéma militant, for any kind of politically involved cinema practices, especially in the aftermath or around sixty-eight. So there's a big corpus of those works. But then as we know that also sixty-eight were global, was global, was a global phenomenon. It never only referred to that, right, because it was also a global practice, I would say. And then if you think of militant cinemas, it's, and I would actually frame it as militant image with a reference to Ross Gay and Kujoe Eshun who termed this like militant image in their introduction of the third text issue of the journal Third Text. It's any kind of film, image or sound practice, exhibition, distribution, meeting, gathering, screening, text, talk, speech, person, festival whatsoever that is related to film practices in trying to put forward anti-colonial and postcolonial struggles and not only being in solidarity with them but actually contributing via film and really making cinema instrumental for the struggles. And instrumental in that sense as it was proposed in the seminal text by Fernando Solanas and Octavio Getino in their text Towards a Third Cinema. They started, the first publication was in sixty-nine, when they talk about cinema as a tool for cultural decolonization and it's instrumental. And many other things evolve out of that. But it's so how how does why is it African militant cinema? It's the whole idea, I would say, of the militant image, it's that it's not...
Speaker 1: Only focused on one region, nation, national context, but it's always been tri-continental. So it's very much linked to the whole idea of tri-continentalism of what we once called third world. And it goes back to a conference that took place in sixty six in Havana, Cuba. And so also I would say that those early militant cinema practices on the African continent are very much linked to the nationalist liberation movements, but at the same time they're also linked to this tri-continentalism because the people that were involved were part of that movement. And with regard to the films, in my project I'm not so much interested in giving an overview of all the militant cinema practice that there have been there, but it's rather working with that term and looking at specific configurations of certain films and how they circulated, how they were made, who was involved, how do they relate to other films in this sense. And then one example would maybe be Sara Maldrova's film Sangue Zanga came out in nineteen seventy three and it's dedicated to the liberation struggles and set in Angola. It's about the Angolan liberation struggle. And it's really about trying to also at once trace the production histories, if you will, which has been done a lot with this film, but then also trying to think about what happens when this film that had been couldn't be shown in the cinemas for a very long time. So there was only one copy in the public library in New York and then it circulated on YouTube for many years. That's how I saw it the first time. And then now in twenty one it has been restored by Pepepaci, Cinemaritrovato and the World Cinema Fund. And so it's always also about how does this relate to today and the question why is it so important that we look at those films today?
Speaker 2: Maybe shortly before we start talking about this question of circulation, archiving, restoration, maybe just explain us how can film be a tool for resistance, political activism? I mean, we as film scholars in a way we know what we're talking about, but maybe our audience not. Could you give us some hints how to understand film really as a political resisting practice or, I mean, if you call it militant cinema, how can film cinema be militant?
Speaker 1: Okay, I try to break it down. So the first would be really thinking of film as a collective practice, like the making of film as a collective practice. That would be the first thing how you can link it to political work or organization. And then the second would be the exhibition, the screening of films. That is also used to be even more so with the analog film or a collective experience. And with regard to that, there's been a lot of work been done on how can we think through film and politics through the question of the collective experience of the screening. And one of the most important points that Heiti and Solanas made was that they conceived of the screening as a cinema act, the filmic event, the screening event as a cinema act, as a potential or actual political meeting. And they did that because in the Argentinian context where they were based and where they made their film Laura de los Hornos, and they had to make the film under clandestine circumstances and also the screenings were partly under clandestine circumstances. So it was really about, and then what they also did is they addressed this whole questions in their film and they say, okay, this is where the film ends. Now it's up to you. And they would consider film as something that is something that can ignite the struggle, right? In that sense that it's opening up a space where people can actually engage and come up with new ideas and strategies and tactics for the struggle. So that would be one part of it. But I think also when I go back to Sara Maldrova, it's really also on the level of the narrative, if you would say, but then also on the level of the aesthetic. And there it's really telling the story of the beginning of the or the time just before the taking up the militant struggle in Angola and also the creation of the collective.
Speaker 1: And the solidarity of the Angolan people and then the movement, but it's also at the same time really the way how I would say uh this is shown aesthetically by trying to undo and that's really also I think a big part of that trying to undo the racism that is inherent in the photographic stock of film since its emergence or development at the late nineteenth century, right? So it's been also and then how can not only this but also the yeah how can the struggles of black peoples but also peoples from the global south be changed in a way that they don't that there's an interruption of the colonial gaze, right?
Speaker 2: And if you say that militant cinema is I mean is very much linked to the anti-colonial struggles on the continent, then in a way I assume I have the answer already but I would like you to comment on that why is it or why is it on one side important to you to have a new look on this and the other point as far as I remember it's kind of getting popular or popular maybe that's too much but there's a new interest generally in the public seems to for militant cinema. Maybe you can comment on that why is this happening just now or these years?
Speaker 1: Can I just add something from the last thing because I think it might be a good link because I really think so Sarah Maldoror she made the film for Africans and African audiences even though she knew it would be really difficult to show it on the continent and they couldn't shoot the film in Angola because it was still Portuguese colony and they shot it in Congo and it was French money and it was shown all over the globe but at the same time it was also to really gather solidarity all over the world right with the Lusophone liberation struggle. So it's it's never been it's it's a and it's a really important thing to think okay we we do African film for African peoples and audiences and it has been for a long time being really difficult because there because of the funding basically and the infrastructures but at the same time it's always been again in circulation through the festivals globally and reception and the interest. And why is it interesting now? I mean now is I would say there are certain waves and I would say the last one starts around two thousand eight nine ten when there are like new publications coming out and also archival projects starting scholarly projects starting artistic projects starting filmmakers archival projects starting and I think it's really or that's what I what I read from different different publications that it's really because of the current situation at that point, right? It's really contemporary urgencies and it's for instance there's in one publication there's Simon Gikandi in the preface saying okay whatever happened to decolonization, right? And I think that's the core question because it's whatever happened to it and it happened various things when we look at how the newly founded independent states what happened to them and civil wars and so on. I'm not going to go into that but it's but also it it is something that couldn't be talked about anymore, right? For a long time in a way it felt like that. I think that's a sense that was going on and it was really also in relation to the neoliberal mentality taking over and yeah subjectivizing all of us in a way and how can we find openings and potentialities to to yeah find some openings to open that in a way and I think that was also a move to go back and look okay what was what was actually what were the different projects after decolonization cultural decolonization but also decolonization or liberation militant liberation struggles and then especially in Lusophone Africa turned into wars now. And at the same time I really think it was also linked to the new emerging accessibility through the circulation of those films on the platforms and that they somehow reappeared.
Speaker 1: And were able to see, but also the interest of places like the Arsenal in Berlin, for instance, Institute for Film and Video Art, having many copies of films of the Global South since their initiation with the form of the Young International Film, because they, all these filmmakers showed their films there, so there's copies of those films. So then, they also initiated archival projects. So is there's this configuration of incidents that come together at that same point, I think.
Speaker 2: So in this sense, archiving and restoration seem to be very, very important in order to make them accessible, these films accessible again or to bring them again into circulation. Yeah. Um, it's interesting that, I mean, it's clear that of course after all the anti-colonial fights and now the official decolonial states or autonomous states, still we see a lot of colonial legacies, also in the relationalities between Germany, for example, where we're situated now, and the Global South. And of course the urgency, the contemporary urgency you were speaking about, racism, inequalities, neoliberal capitalism and so on. But it's interesting that now drawing on these films from the nineteen sixties and seventies, I'm curious what they can, because on one side I see the urgencies are still very much there, but the tools seem to have changed a lot. Also the question of what especially after nineteen eighty nine and the breakdown of the Soviet Union and the socialist bloc in a way, all the left movements said, okay, what now? Which kind of strategies, tactics? So I am wondering how these films from the nineteen sixties and seventies, what you would say, what they can say us today for the struggles and the important struggles of still decolonizing today. What can they say us and where would you say yeah, has it yeah?
Speaker 1: I think really, I mean, the question of whatever happened to decolonization also points us to the fact that it's ongoing, right? It hasn't happened. And the coloniality is still happening. And also we could consider decolonization as an ongoing process. We could, that would be more in the sense of Amílcar Cabral as like a constant becoming, no? As the leader of the PAIGC, the liberation movement of Guinea-Bissau. But also, I mean, with Frantz Fanon, we have to think of it as a complete turnover and interruption and violent motion, right? That cannot be without that. So, but then I think it's really, this is crucial. And then, what can the film tell us is that, again, with regards to her Maleroa, I would say, or that's what I'm trying to argue in my chapter on that film, is that when you look at her film, you can really trace issues that are so important today with the struggles for decolonizing today and also for approaches like restorative justice and questions, for instance, of like how community and care play a big role in that. And that that's something that she shows us, right? So I think it's really, it's really timely in that sense. And the other thing, another example that I've been working on is the film Touki Bouki by Djibril Diop Mambéty. And his film is in Senegal of nineteen seventy one, I think it came out. And the starting point for me writing about Touki Bouki was a text where I say it's thinking with Touki Bouki because in twenty eighteen, the Carters who are Beyoncé and Jay-Z used the really well known and very popular poster of the film and they did a, they restaged, there was a remediation, you could say, of this poster of the film to advertise their second tour, world tour, right? So and it's taking, they're taking it up. They take this film from seventy two up in order to make a point in their career at a point where where in the US there is not only systemic anti-black racism and state, state races, yeah, state racism and killings, but there's also Trump. And Beyoncé and Jay-Z have become over the course of those last years more outspoken in terms of that. So then they take this up in order to tell a different story of fugitivism, right? Fugitivity, which is a really important concept, I would say, in with regards to African-American radical thought, Black radical thought, but also really the history of slavery and in the plantation in North America. So then it's again a tool to relate this back, but at the same time use it for the contemporary, even though it's in the pop cultural.
[speaker change]
Speaker 1: sphere, right? But it's still linked to the political, I would say.
Speaker 2: That's interesting. We bring in the concept of knowledge in a way. You showed quite good how the how we can understand the militant image as knowledge producing and how this knowledge has been brought into circulation again on one side in restoration work and archival work, but on the other side also including it in a way and transforming it, drawing on it, referring to it, reconfiguring it maybe towards pop in pop culture, pop culture. That's very interesting. Maybe uh to as a last question, um I'm very curious on two questions actually. Maybe one question, give us some more hints how we also non scholars might be able to watch these films. You mentioned YouTube. So is it easy to find them even if I am not able to find a cinema which just screens it? How can I get access to them?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I would say uh YouTube is always a good source, first place to look. And but obviously, I mean there has been many films have been restored thanks to Abu Bakar Sanogo in FEPACI, but also Martin Scorsese and the World Cinema Fund and also Cinemaritrovato in Bologna, you know. And um and other initiatives, but they would be the most obvious. And I mention them also because they have finally after the daughters of Sara Monod fighting for twenty years to get the rights to the copy back to restore it in collaboration with them. And so it has been restored in twenty one and now there is a copy. But I also know you can access it via Amazon Prime, not to advertise it, but it's interesting because then they link it to movies. So there's different platforms and then you can access really easily because it's part of the World Cinema Fund Foundation.
Speaker 2: And at the same time, in a way, in a neoliberal platform capitalism platform. Someone earns money with it. But it's interesting because it makes it also available on these huge platforms getting maybe other audience than before.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think it's also, I mean, how can you, it's also about smuggling in a way, right? I would say it's not only yeah, or it's appropriating those platforms in a way, I would say.
Speaker 2: Reconfiguration.
Speaker 1: That would be actually my last question, coming back just as a maybe short outlook towards the question of what does that do with a discipline dealing with this kind of topics, with this kind of material, with the radicalness, if that exists in English, yeah, or the militancy of these films and dealing with them and situating them in the colonial fight. That's quite not yet done in German media studies as far as I see at least. So how would you say, does that change the discipline you're working in or how far the discipline has still to be reconfigured to take up the motto of the cluster reconfiguring media studies?
Speaker 1: How I see it is that actually the texts that were produced within the militant image, like the continental militant cinema practices, they are actually postcolonial or anticolonial media theory avant la lettre. So that would be the first thing, right? So that they have to be considered as a really important part to think through media theory and postcolonial media theory. And that, yeah, and I think that's also really a claim that I would make. The other thing is that it also helps us to, or what I would say, what's important is to not only look at the current, to understand that the digital, or the formation of the digital culture as we live it or live in it, right, to understand that it's really helpful to try to trace the genealogies of them through the practices. I think that would also be something that's really important and valid in order to make sense also of the contemporary, of the now. And the third would probably be really in terms of knowledge and knowledge production to take those serious in that sense that even though because everything is so globalized and everything seems so globally accessible, it is not. I mean, there's not only various inequalities and power relations that are really still along the same old lines of global north and global south and in terms of racism and yeah, because I mean, in his...
Speaker 1: Yeah, just in a recent talk by Achille Mbembe, he said that this is the biggest problem is the massiveness and the ongoing—he didn't say it like that—but is racism right now. So and I would agree actually. So, and it really helps us to think through this in terms of how can we link those practices also the current ones to this question. And it helps us also to not depoliticize fields that are actually always political.
Speaker 2: Yeah, thank you very much because that in a way also shows that as you point to the topic of or the problem of racism, it points to that this militant image is not just interesting for African countries, but with this perspective you're taking us in, it shows the responsibility we in Germany—we too as white scholars in this context have fighting racism in Germany and the colonial legacy. So, thank you very much for the inspirations. I would like to follow up, but maybe we can do that some other time. Thanks for listening to the audience. Thanks Maya and hear you again in the next podcast of the cluster.
Speaker 1: Thank you.
Speaker 2: Bye-bye.
Speaker 1: Bye.
[music]Value Annotations
Value Annotations
- Generated by
- Qwen3-Omni-30B-A3B-Instruct