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African Film Festivals and Transnational Flows of Living Cultural Heritage
Edited by Sheila Petty
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Book Presentation:
This open access book investigates how flows of knowledge that arise from the African continent travel and are transformed through new contexts of presentation and engagement in new locations. Through case studies on Africa-themed film festivals in Africa, Europe and the Americas, the book explores potential methods of catalyzing a “transnational flow” from inception to end that involves attention to process, rather than studying festivals as static cultural products with discrete and isolated categories of programming, presentation, documentation, and networking. The chapters probe how festivals interact with place and location and create journeys of discovery in translating and contextualizing films for specific populations and audiences. The book also focuses on how dialogue is created in a festival-knowledge forum that respects the living nature of cultural heritage as it is received from its original context, presented during film festivals, and passed on to future generations for safeguarding.
About the Author:
Sheila Petty is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and Professor Emerita of Film Studies at the University of Regina, Canada. She has written extensively on cultural heritage in sub-Saharan African, North African and Amazigh cinemas. Her most recent book is Habiba Djahnine: Memory Bearer (2025).
Press Reviews:
"Sure to become a key reference for anyone working on, or in, African film festivals, this edited collection offers a refreshingly pluri-centric perspective on the ways African stories travel across many continents. Petty has brought together an inspiring array of academics and curators to offer much-needed insights into the mythologies, collaborations and communities that constitute today's African film worlds." (Dr. Rachel Johnson, University of Leeds, United Kingdom)
"This volume is an essential festival knowledge forum, centering culture and knowledge originating from the African continent. Through a diverse set of case studies on Africa-themed film festivals across Africa, the Americas, and Europe, it provides rich, collaborative insights from researchers, curators, and communities. The book offers highly engaging Indigenous, postcolonial, and diasporic perspectives, emphasizing the social impact, cultural exchange, and meaningful collaboration of and through film festivals." (Prof. Dr. Skadi Loist, Film University Babelsberg KONRAD WOLF, Germany)
"This edited collection provides a nuanced overview of the role played by international film festivals in shaping our understanding of African cinemas across the globe. Petty brilliantly brings together a wide range of scholars and critics to examine the communities and circuits through which African films circulate. A much-needed intervention in festival studies." (Dr. Antoine Damiens, York University, Canada)
See the publisher website: Palgrave MacMillan
> From the same author:
Directory of World Cinema / Africa (2015)
Dir. Blandine Stefanson and Sheila Petty
> On a related topic:
Amazigh Cinema (2025)
An Introduction to North African Indigenous Film
Dir. Lucy R McNair and Yahya Laayouni
Projections of Dakar (2024)
(Re)Imagining Urban Senegal through Cinema
by Molly Bryson and Molly Krueger Enz
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