USA / 2018 / 31mins / Documentary / Various Languages

Tens of millions of Africans were scattered throughout the world during the centuries of the notorious process of enslavement. The African Diasporan communities that resulted used knowledge and skills brought from Africa to contribute to the building of new societies. Torn from the world they knew, Africans and Afro-descendants forged new identities and created new cultural forms that have enriched global civilization. They preserved ancestral worldviews to which they adapted the cultures of others to create dynamic new fusions. This documentary highlights African knowledge and technologies that helped develop the Americas, visits unsuspected African Diasporan societies, and reveals cultural commonalities uniting African Diasporan communities in distant lands.

Sheila S. Walker

Sheila S. Walker, PhD, cultural anthropologist and documentary filmmaker, has done fieldwork, lectured, and participated in intellectual and cultural events in most of Africa and the Global African Diaspora, and her goal is to educate the public about this diaspora. Her book, African Roots/American Cultures: Africa in the Creation of the Americas, resulting from her international conference on “The African Diaspora and the Modern World,” has a companion documentary, Scattered Africa: Faces and Voices of the African Diaspora. Her book, Conocimiento desde adentro: Los afro-sudamericanos hablan de sus pueblos y sus historias/Conhecimento desde dentro: Os afro-sul-americanos falam de seus povos e suas histórias/Knowledge from the Inside: Afro-South Americans Speak of their People and their Histories (in Spanish and Portuguese), features chapters by Afrodescendants from all the Spanish-speaking countries in South America. She co-produced the documentary, Slave Routes: A Global Vision for the UNESCO Slave Route Project. And her most recent documentary is Familiar Faces/Unexpected Places: A Global African Diaspora, which was shown at the United Nations as the 2018 Black History Month program for the UN International Decade for People of African Descent. It was sent for showings at UN Information Centers in the Americas, Africa, Asia and the Pacific, and Europe. Dr. Walker was a Professor of Anthropology and Director of the Center for African and African American Studies, and held an endowed chair in the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Texas at Austin, and was a Distinguished Visiting Professor, Professor of Anthropology, and Director of the African Diaspora and the World Program at Spelman College.

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