UK and USA / 1995 / 52mins / Documentary / French

Diawara introduces a technique he calls “reverse anthropology.” By turning the camera on the prominent ethnographic filmmaker, Jean Rouch, he opens a dialogue that encourages Africans to create versions of their own past, present and future.

Manthia Diawara

A native of Mali, Manthia Diawara is a writer, film producer, cultural theorist and art historian. Diawara received his education in France and later traveled to the United States for his university studies. He has been published widely on the topic of film and literature of the Black Diaspora. Diawara has taught at the University of California at Santa Barbara and the University of Pennsylvania.  He is the author of We Won't Budge: An African Exile in the World (Basic Civitas Books, 2003), Black-American Cinema: Aesthetics and Spectatorship (ed. Routledge, 1993), African Cinema: Politics and Culture (Indiana University Press, 1992), and In Search of Africa (Harvard University Press, 1998).  He has published widely on the topic of film and literature of the Black Diaspora. Diawara also collaborated with Ngûgî wa Thiong’o in making the documentary Sembene Ousmane: The Making of the African Cinema, and directed the German-produced documentary Rouch in Reverse. Learn More