USA / 2008 / 29mins / Documentary / English, Portuguese, French and Spanish

Scattered Africa: Faces and Voices of the African Diaspora moves from the violent scattering of African people across the earth to their current participation in a global community. The focus here is on their presence in and contributions to the Atlantic World. Portraying the unremunerated economic contributions of Africans and their descendants to the wealth and power of the Americas, it also highlights elements of African culture that characterize contemporary Pan-American life. Emphasizing both similarities and differences, scholars and community leaders—from nations such as Argentina and Uruguay in which the African past and presence is little known, and Suriname and Brazil where African cultural forms are too obvious to deny—discuss their discovery of their African heritage and the scattered transnational community that constitutes the African Diaspora.

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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