by Zainab Aliyu · 39 minutes · English, French, Swahili with English subtitles · Learn more

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Evoking poet Lucille Clifton’s call to ‘sing for red dust and black clay’ in Good News About the Earth, Nigerian-American artist Zainab Aliyu invites thirty filmmakers working within African diasporic cinema to explore pottery as a metaphor that points towards the potential of free forms in her video piece, From red dust to Black clay. Like pottery, film can be a vessel for expressing hopes, dreams, memories and intentions. Invited filmmakers imagine speculative containers for holding these expressions traced from the contours of Black existence, and Aliyu worked with Amsterdam-based Martinique illustrator Mickaël Mehala to translate the filmmakers’ visions into digitized forms. What emerges is a cross-diasporic, intergenerational, and collective meditation on holding, and an assemblage of the vessels from which their meaning is attained.

In this archival depiction of contemporary Black being that extends beyond the frame, Aliyu’s From red dust to Black clay emphasizes the urgency of, given the conditioned violences derived from the structure of the hold (as described by theorist Christina Sharpe), imagining generative possibilities for holding and being beholden to each other.

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Artist
Zainab Aliyu

Narrators
Abdul Ndadi
Akin Omotoso
Andrew Dosunmu
Balufu Bakupa-Kanyinda
Cilia Sawadogo
Ekwa Msangi
Férid Boughedir
Gaston Kaborè
Guetty Felin
Judy Kibinge
Joël Karekezi
Kenneth Gyang
Ladan Osman
LiON Ayodele
Mamadou Dia
Mariette Monpierre
Moussa Sene Absa
Mwangi Hutter
Nganji Mutiri
Ngozi Onwurah
nora chipaumire
Olive Nwosu
Rahmatou Keïta
Raja Amari
Raynald Leconte
Sifiso Khanyile
Stephina Zwane
Teddy Goitom
Tsitsi Dangarembga
Xoliswa Sithole

Production Assistant
Dara Ojugbele

Illustrator
Mickaël Mehala (Black Childish)

Audio Composer
Nombuso Mathibela

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Commissioned by the New York African Film Festival at Film at Lincoln Center, 2023