Tag: B(l)ackwardnessPage 2 of 2
ESSAYS / PROSPECTIVE
There’s an ambiguity about afrofuturism no one seems to mention : what does the “afro” part of it refers to ? Everyone agrees on the fact that Afrofuturism rests upon a science-fictional representation of the world, from an afro point of view. But what is an afro-view ?
Last month, we drew a portrait of Mark Dery, who, among MANY things, first coined the term Afrofuturism. But what we haven’t shared with you is his “What stands beyond Afrofuturism?”, at a time showing the limits of an embedded status-quo denouncing obvious discriminations but oblivious of insidious systemic forms.
Critic, essayist, book author, lecturer, journalist, Newyorker…, Mark Dery has surely been a trend observer – and eventually whistle blower – of urban life and techno culture for the past twenty years. We also owe him the term afrofuturism, which he first coined in an article entitled “Black to the future” (named after alternative hip hop musician and rapper Def Jef’s track).
From last 4 to 7 June, Paris hosted the third edition of the Nigerian Film Festival, the Nollywood Week Film Festival. An opportunity to return to a phenomenon that has propelled the most populous country in Africa on center stage, alongside the Bollywoodian outsider and the overwhelming Hollywood machine. How did Nigeria emerge within the Top 3, despite a substantial lack of resources which have long played against it? Can the advent of a new “Nollywood”, more structured, reverse the trend in cinematography for the coming years?
Kan Hoho, “The old rope,” is a proverb taken from the Fon (Benin, West Africa) language and saying that, “It is at the end of the old rope that one weaves the new.” The image is thus of the importance of the continuity of generations and of history.