In this conversation, Adebanjo Baderin sits down with Ghanaian producer Kofi Owusu-Afriyie to talk about his work and his participation in the Cinema Africa Bayreuth Film Festival. They discuss Owusu-Afriyie’s journey in film, including his role in bringing contemporary African stories to international audiences, and his experience presenting The Fisherman at the 17th edition of Cinema Africa. The festival, held at Cineplex Bayreuth from January 25–28, showcases diverse African cinema and fosters cultural exchange through screenings and filmmaker discussions.
In this video, legendary Mozambican musician Stewart Sukuma sits down for an in-depth conversation with Prof. Dr. Ute Fendler, curator of the Cinema Africa film festival in Bayreuth, Germany. Their discussion, recorded on 23 January 2026, explores Sukuma’s artistic journey, the intersections of music and film, and his role in the festival’s program. Sukuma was part of the festival’s opening night celebration for “The Anchorage of Time” (Ancoradouro do Tempo), a Mozambican/Portuguese crime drama screened at the 17th Cinema Africa film festival held at Cineplex Bayreuth a few days later. The conversation offers rare personal insights into Sukuma’s creative process and his reflections on African cinema, culture, and global artistic exchange.
For anyone interested a link to Stewart Sukuma's book is: https://www.poesiaimpossivel.com/o-alfaiate-e-a-arte-de-costurar-o-amor
This working paper looks at the connections between the editorial projects of Mensagem (edited in Lisbon, by Casa dos Estudantes do Império, 1948 – 1965), Présence Africaine (Paris, France and Dakar, Senegal, from 1947) and Black Orpheus (Ibadan, Nigeria, 1957 - 1975). It will reflect on the mobility of objects and ideas through the networks established within Africa and Europe by the negritudinists, Pan-African, or anticolonial writers and intellectuals discussed in those reviews. The circulations of texts, authors, and translations between those three literary projects were connected to a conception of art committed to the dignification of cultures and knowledges beyond Eurocentric conceptions. While it maps connections, circulations, and translations of printed material, this working paper also problematizes the dynamics and imbalances that characterized those publications, related both to intellectual displacement and to the consequences of colonial rule on the conceptual and socio-political systems.
The debate on different forms of political mobilization and self-organization in Africa refers to the established concepts of civil society and social movements. Knowing that the majority of studies on civil society and social movements focus on the Global North, we ask whether these concepts may be applied to Africa. We need to consider different forms of self-organization and the potential limits of the concepts. At the same time, ‘unusual cases’ from Africa may help us to sharpen our understanding of the concepts and to explore their analytical range and borders. This applies particularly to the observation that the terms civil society and social movement are often used interchangeably, which ignores the existing differences between the concepts. Therefore, we first consider their different perspectives: A study of civil society analyses the features of associations in a public sphere or arena and their role in politics and society. A study of social movements looks at processes of mobilization and action. Second, we point out the normative implications of the two concepts, especially with regard to liberal democracy, degree of politicization and relation to violence.
What have affirmative action policies, categorization of care needs, plastic surgery, forensic identification of dead bodies and age assessments of refugees in common? They all determine recognition and access to resources and rights via the body. In the introduction to this special issue, the editors emphasize that the body only becomes distinct and significant when it is put in relation to historically and geographically differing norms and standards. This relational approach opens up the ‘black boxes’ of science, medicine, bureaucracy and eventually the body. Drawing on practice theory, critical citizenship studies and Science and Technology Studies, the authors discuss notions of social citizenship and the conceptualization of biological citizenship in medical anthropology. They think with the contributions of the special issue that analyse how medical practitioners, state and private institutions, as well as individuals enact certain bodies in specific material and discursive constellations. By taking neither citizenship nor the body for granted, the special issue shows how situationally-bound elements in relations, space and time, matter for a person’s access to rights and resources – and hence can draw attention to blind spots in particular categorization practices.
