African Film Festivals and Transnational Flows of Living Cultural Heritage

Abstract

This open access book investigates how flows of knowledge that arise from the African continent travel and are transformed through new contexts of presentation and engagement in new locations. Through case studies on Africa-themed film festivals in Africa, Europe and the Americas, the book explores potential methods of catalyzing a “transnational flow” from inception to end that involves attention to process, rather than studying festivals as static cultural products with discrete and isolated categories of programming, presentation, documentation, and networking. The chapters probe how festivals interact with place and location and create journeys of discovery in translating and contextualizing films for specific populations and audiences. The book also focuses on how dialogue is created in a festival-knowledge forum that respects the living nature of cultural heritage as it is received from its original context, presented during film festivals, and passed on to future generations for safeguarding.