Information for our readers in Paris, France, courtesy of the African Women In Cinema blog…

Taking place this Friday, November 23 and Saturday, November 24, at the Quai Branly museum – an international colloquium titled "Francophone African Women Filmmakers: 40 Years of Cinema (1972-2012)".

The objective of this event is to celebrate the forty years of African filmmaking by African women, starting in 1972, with Angolan director Sarah Maldoror's feature film Sambizanga (which won recognition at the 1973 Berlin International Film Festival; that same year, Michael Kerbel of The Village Voice compared the film to Sergei Eisenstein's Battleship Potemkin in terms of its political significance), and the short film La Passante by Safi Faye of Senegal – a film she made while still in film school.

Surprisingly, I found Maldoror's Sambizanga on YouTube in its entirety, however, there's no audio, unfortunately. BUT it's subtitled in English! Otherwise, good luck finding it anywhere else.

Here's 25% of the colloquium program:

Friday 23 November 2012, morning – Musée du Quai Branly, cinema hall

9h15-9h30: Welcoming of participants

9h30-9h45: Introduction

9h45-10h45: Plenary : Beti Ellerson (Center for the Study and Research of African Women in Cinema) "40 Years of Cinema by Women in Africa" (lead by Jackie Buet, FIFF)

10h45-11h15: Break

11h15-12h30: Panel 1 : Questions of Identities (lead by Brigitte Rollet, CHCSC-UVSQ)

Daniela Ricci (Université de Lyon): "Women Filming Women: Two Films of the West African Diaspora".

Lizelle Bischoff (University of Edinburgh): "Images of Women in the Context of Globalisation: Identity and the Transcultural Experiences of African Women Filmmakers"

12h30-13h00: Audience discussion

13h00-14h30: Lunch

For the remaining 75% of the program, which I'd say gets even better from one section to the next, visit the African Women In Cinema blog HERE.

This should be a GREAT 2 days of education for those who attend; I wish I could; there's still so much to learn. If you'll be present, please send me an email (obensont@gmail.com); I'd love a rundown/summary of events that we can share here on the site.

Here's Maldoror's Sambizanga; it was her first film, co-written by her husband, a leader in the then Angolan resistance. The story focuses on a happy young couple whose lives are disrupted when, one day, the husband is arrested for political reasons, and interrogated in a dreaded Luanda prison. The central focus of the film is the young wife's search for her *lost* husband, from village to village – a journey that points out, with heartbreaking clarity, the contrast between promise and oppression in modern Africa.