Marpessa Dawn, Duke Ellington, and Langston Hughes (far right) at the Festival Mondial des Arts Negrès, 1966.
Film Screening and Q&A: The First World Festival of Negro Arts
Join us to open the Washington University African Film Festival with a screening of The First World Festival of Negro Arts (1966), the official documentary of the Festival Mondial des Arts Negrès (FESMAN) held in Dakar, Senegal, in 1966. Over 2,000 artists, dancers, intellectuals, performers, and writers from Africa and the African diaspora gathered to celebrate Black culture in the newly independent nation of Senegal. Director, producer, actor, and writer William Greaves documented this historic event that included exhibitions of classical, modern, and contemporary African art, performances and theatrical productions, and a colloquium of philosophers, authors, and cultural critics.
The screening will be followed by a Q&A with Baba Badji, postdoctoral associate in Comparative Literature | Institute for the Study of Global Racial Justice at Rutgers University, and faculty from the Department of African and African-American Studies in Arts & Sciences.
Free and open to the public.
The Museum galleries will be open for extended hours until 7 pm on March 23–25 to view the exhibition African Modernism in America before film screenings.
Presented in conjunction with the Washington University African Film Festival.