FollowCHIMURENGA LIBRARY
In her preface of “Deep Sightings & Rescue Missions” Toni Morrison described the author, the other Toni, Cade Bambara, as outrageously brilliant. “There was no division in her mind between optimism and ruthless vigilance; between aesthetic obligation and the aesthetics of obligation. There was no doubt whatsoever that the work she did had work to do,” she said.
Toni Cade Bambara’s lesser known work was as a filmmaker as well as film historian and critic. She was a close-watcher of what became known as the LA Rebellion and noted relations between Black independent cinema and emergent African cinema, particularly with the films of Ousmane Sembene.
This week we re-listen to TCB’s keynote address at the Detroit session of “Journey Across 3 Continents”. Conceived and curated by film historian Pearl Bowser, “Journey” was an itinerant festival that traversed the US from 1983-85, crossing 22 cities, “to expose new audiences to the work of filmmakers of Africa and the black diaspora, and to convey to the audience the shared kinship and rituals, history, traditions and diversity of the black experience from Africa, Europe and the Americas”.
Toni’s keynote begins in the 1880s, to imagine a history of Black film, or, more appropriately, a Black history of film. Let’s listen again.
(“The Birth of Black Cinema” was a symposium organised by the other Toni, Morrison, on Black cinema in 1983, that we shall listen to, again, next week)
Live on PASS today, Wed 22 April, from 7pm