The majority of this site’s content is undeniably heavily African American-focused, and thus its readership is also primarily African American (at least, USA based). There’s certainly nothing wrong with that. But, the tag-line at the top of this blog does read: “Cinema of the African Diaspora;” and while there’s certainly a concerted effort being made to cover cinema from the rest of the vast and varied African Diaspora, I’d readily admit that the site has got some ways to go in that regard.
Most of the non-black American cinema covered here are films and filmmakers who’ve somehow managed to burst onto the international scene, usually via film festivals, or who come from email alert, whether from the filmmaker, or an affiliate. But the hope has always been that a day will come when you’ll visit S&A, and it’ll be divided by country. So if you wanted to know what was happening on the film scene in Kenya for example, you’d just click over to the “Kenya” section, and all the posts in that area will be specific to that country, etc, etc, etc.
It’ll take some time to get there, and manpower (a global effort really, via contributions from readers all over the world, reporting on the local film scene wherever they live), and most necessary, money, which I’m not exactly swimming in!
But, to emphasize something I’ve said before, I’m always open to submissions, so don’t be shy if you’ve got something you’d like the world to read.
That’s always been my goal for S&A – one massive web-based portal where you can find out about current Diaspora cinema in any part of the world!
In the meantime, I’d like to take a survey. As the title of this post states, name your favorite non-black American African Diaspora films (films that tell stories primarily about people of African descent, not including black Americans). Let’s say, give us your top 5; and you can go as far back in film history as you’d like.
And in anticipation of the number of responses that I think will include this film, I’m going to exclude City Of God. So, any titles other than City Of God. Sorry.
Eventually, I’ll return with a follow-up post which will include the most popular 5 films you folks list, as well as my own list of Diaspora films that I think you should see, if you haven’t already.
So, with that, give it a go!
