"African Spiritualities" Documentaries and Meet the Filmmakers at Anthology Film Archives May 26-27
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The "African Spiritualities" film series continues with screenings at NYC's Anthology Film Archives. Filmmaker Al Santana will join for a Q&A following the screening on Monday, May 26, moderated by Akan Priestess Amadoma Bediako. Manthia Diawara will join for a Q&A following the screening on Tuesday, May 27, moderated by Prof. Boukary Sawadogo.
"Voices of the Gods" 2K Digital Preservation
This film, by visual artist, independent filmmaker, cinematographer, and still photographer Al Santana, captures the rich legacy of ancient African religions practiced in the United States. It provides rare insight into the practices and beliefs of the Akan and Yoruba religions and illustrates how mass media has been used to ridicule and denigrate these belief systems. The director provides intimate and respectful studies of an Egungun ancestral communion ceremony and daily life in the Yoruba village of Oyotunji in Sheldon, South Carolina, the only traditional African village of its kind in the U.S. VOICES OF THE GODS includes contemporary and historical examples of the influences of these religions in secular African-American culture, which in turn has influenced mainstream American society, culture, and politics.
Monday, May 26 at 6:30 PM (Q&A with Al Santana and Amadoma Bediako)
Tuesday, May 27 at 8:45 PM
"AI: African Intelligence" Berlinale Forum Expanded
Granted rare access to Ndeup, a spiritual healing ceremony practiced by Lebou peoples in Senegal, filmmaker and writer Manthia Diawara – with input from a cadre of scientists and academics – wonders what connections, if any, can be made between the possession ritual and Western logic. AI: AFRICAN INTELLIGENCE imagines generative ways of utilizing and thinking about “machine learning”, which Diawara fears might otherwise elide specific cultural practices like Ndeup.“Considering the confluence of tradition and modernity, Diawara questions how we could move from disembodied machines towards a more humane and spiritual control of algorithms. Could Africa be the context of emergence for such improbable algorithms?” –BERLINALE
Monday May 26, 8:30 PM
Tuesday, May 27, 6:00 PM (Q&A with Manthia Diawara and Boukary Sawadogo)
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Amadoma Bediako has been a part of the Akan community in America since the late 70's. She is a Traditional Akan Priest (Okomfo), trained by the late Nana Yao Opare Dinizulu I. She is a retired teacher/librarian and the owner of Back to the Root: Services for Birthing Families. She has served as a Traditional Birth Attendant, Childbirth Educator, Lactation Counselor, Infant Massage Instructor, Dancing thru Pregnancy Instructor, Full Spectrum Doula/Birth Attendant, and DONA International Approved Birth Doula Trainer. She currently works as a Childbirth Educator and Doula Mentor for Healthy Start Brooklyn. She also teaches a Maternal Health and Doula Training course for Kingsborough Community College: Division of Workforce Development and Continuing Education. Amadoma works with the By My Side Birth Support Program and Healthy Women, Healthy Futures in New York City. In 2018, Amadoma traveled to Tanzania, East Africa to train Birth Companions for the Thamini Uhai organization. She also trained two women there who became Certified Birth Doulas. In 2023 she trained several birth doulas for the Lwala Community Alliance in Kenya, West Africa. She has trained hundreds of birth doulas, many of whom work in community-based doula programs throughout New York City. Amadoma served as a member of the New York City Maternal Mortality and Morbidity Review Committee for four years. She is committed to reducing the maternal and infant mortality statistics, particularly for families of color, in New York City and beyond.
Dr. Boukary Sawadogo is Associate Professor of Film in the Department of Media and Communication Arts at the City College of New York – City University of New York (CUNY). Also, he is a faculty member in the French doctoral program and the Certificate Program in Film and Media Cultures at the CUNY Graduate Center. Dr. Sawadogo has teaching and research interests in African cinema and Black American cinema. As an African cinema and Black diaspora scholar, he has authored five books, including Africans in Harlem: An Untold New York Story (2022), African Film Studies: An Introduction. Second edition (2022), West African Screen Media: Comedy, TV Series, and Transnationalization (2019), African Film Studies: An Introduction. First edition (2018), and Les cinémas francophones ouest africains, 1990-2005
(2013). He has recently completed a book manuscript, provisionally titled No Uninteresting Part of America, exploring what it means to be African in America through W.E.B. du Bois’s concept of double consciousness. In addition to his scholarship, Dr. Boukary Sawadogo is a media arts practitioner (a documentary film and a web-series on Africans in America) and the founding director of the Harlem African Animation Festival, the first festival in the United States that is exclusively devoted to African animated film and series. For the 2024-2025 academic year, he holds the Stuart Z. Katz Professorship in the Humanities and Arts at the City College of New York.

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