EVENTS

Manthia Diawara
Angela Davis: A World of Greater Freedom
Centro Cultural de Belém, Lisbon
30.09.2023, 19h00

E-Flyer (port)

Manthia Diawara, Angela Davis: A World of Greater Freedom, 2023, film still

Following its presentation at the Sharjah Biennale, the Portuguese premiere of the essay film Angela Davis: A World of Greater Freedom (2023), by Manthia Diawara, takes place at the Centro Cultural de Belém. The screening is followed by a conversation between Manthia Diawara and researcher the Sarah Lewis-Cappellari.

Produced by Maumaus / Lumiar Cité and co-funded by the Belém Cultural Centre Foundation, the film reflects on the life and work of the North American activist Angela Davis. Manthia Diawara’s camera follows Davis as she walks through a forest of giant sequoias, works in the garden or walks her dog, while reflecting on myriad issues, including ideas of freedom, resistance, rebellion, remaking our world, political blackness, radical black thought, music, (inter)nationalism, (Global South) feminism, abolition, the industrial prison complex, generational shifts, dialectics, contradiction, Africa, sexuality, desire and also friendship. The film is neither a biography nor a fictional narrative. Instead, Diawara’s footage, which is interspersed with relevant archival material, presents itself as a poetic compendium of Davis’s critical thinking and an inspiration for new imaginaries and new relations within an emergent new world.

Manthia Diawara (Mali) is a distinguished Professor of Comparative Literature and Film at New York University. Manthia Diawara is a prolific writer and film-maker. His essays on art, cinema and politics have appeared in The New York Times Magazine, LA Times, Libération, Mediapart and Artforum. He has published several books on African and African American cinema. Diawara’s notable films include: Angela Davis: A World of Greater Freedom (2023), AI: African Intelligence (2022), A Letter from Yene (2022), An Opera of the World (2017), Negritude: A Dialogue between Soyinka and Senghor (2015), Édouard Glissant, One World in Relation (2010), Maison Tropicale (2008) and Rouch in Reverse (1995). His films have been presented at festivals, biennials and a wide range of exhibition venues, including the Berlin International Film Festival, Bienal de São Paulo, Biennale de Dakar, Biennale de Lubumbashi, Centre Pompidou, documenta 14, Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA), Lumiar Cité, Museu de Serralves, HKW-Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Manifesta, MOCA Busan; Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Pan-African Film & TV Festival of Ouagadougou (FESPACO), Serpentine Galleries and Sharjah Biennial.

Sarah Lewis-Cappellari (Dominican Republic/EUA) is a curator, dramaturg, and currently a Ph.D. candidate in Performance Studies at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) whose work engages the interface of performance, contemporary art, colonial visual economies, and Black Studies. Lewis-Cappellari was based in Berlin where she received her MFA at the University of Arts Berlin in the "Art in Context" program and worked with the art & science collective Mobile Academy Berlin as one of the collective’s primary curators and researchers. Sarah has also researched and worked with collaborative art practices as a member of the performance collective LEWIS FOREVER (which presented work amongst other places at Performance Space 122 and the New Museum in NYC), and independently with SOIT in Brussels, Agora and Sophiensaele in Berlin, and Tanzhaus NRW in Düsseldorf.

Angela Davis: A World of Greater Freedom

A film by Manthia Diawara

Produced by Lumiar Cité / Maumaus

Commissioned by Sharjah Art Foundation with major funding from the Mellon Foundation, co-commissioned by TBA21 Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary with the support of Centro Cultural de Belém Foundation, Lisbon, and Portuguese Ministry of Culture / Directorate-General for the Arts.