Speaker: Vlad Dima
Time: 12:00 pm- 1:00 pm CST
Venue: 206 Ingraham Hall
This in-person event will be livestreamed (Click here to Zoom in)
Talk Description
This presentation is drawn from my recent book on Black Girl (Bloomsbury/BFI Film Classics, June 2025). To give you a sense of the general direction of book, I think about this film as a map on which one can trace Sembene’s career, simultaneously moving backwards into his literary career and moving forwards into his groundbreaking filmic career. A key question emerges from this consideration: if Black Girl could be considered the very spark that ignited the entire field of African cinemas, how far might this map extend? I frame Black Girl as Sembene’s most consequential film and as a film that potentially maps out the future of African cinemas (in which we currently live). Specifically for this presentation, I will focus on the film’s sonic frames and its visual echoes. I will begin with the film’s use of sound and voice (the sonic frames) and then I will discuss the film’s legacy in the contemporary by way of visual frames and visual echoes.
Speaker’s Bio
Vlad Dima is Professor of African American Studies at Syracuse University. He has published numerous articles, mainly on French and francophone cinemas, but also on Francophone literature, comics, American cinema, and television. He is the author of the following books: Sonic Space in Djibril Diop Mambety’s Films (Indiana University Press, 2017), The Beautiful Skin: Football, Fantasy, and Cinematic Bodies in Africa (Michigan State University Press, 2020), Meaninglessness: Time, Rhythm, and the Undead in in Postcolonial Cinema (Michigan State University Press, 2022), and Black Girl (Bloomsbury/BFI Film Classics, 2025). He is currently working on two books: the first is about absence(s) in the cinema of Cristian Mungiu, and the second is about love/unlove in postcolonial cinemas.
The event is free and open to the public.