Case 6: African Cinema

Film is one of the most powerful art forms in today’s world.

New, distinctive voices are emerging in African cinema – but how do the films they produce reflect the diversity of African languages and cultures?

In this interview, Fadhili Maghhiya, creator and director of the Watch Africa film festival which promotes African movies across Wales, talks about how film makers from African countries deal with linguistic and cultural diversity.

There is a tendency, as he says quoting a famous TED talk by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, to tell ‘a single story’ about Africa. So how can film highlight diversity, countering the ‘danger of a single story’?

One of the films mentioned in the interview is ‘I am not a witch’, a 2017 film by director Rungano Nyoni, who was born in Zambia and grew up in Wales. The film has received excellent reviews and recently won a BAFTA award.

The trailer for the film is available to view, as is an interview with Rungano Nyoni.