Portugal, Mali and USA / 2017 / 70mins / Documentary / English

Filmmaker and renowned Malian scholar Manthia Diawara simultaneously reflects upon the migration of the opera form and the refugee crisis, as specifically experienced in Europe. Featuring a performance of the opera Bintou Were, a Sahel Opera, written by Chadian poet Koulsy Lamko, which tells the story of a young mother desperately attempting to make her way to a better future for herself and her unborn.

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