Events & Veranstaltungen

What does it mean to make community visible in cinema? When does the act of seeing, remembering, and storytelling together become a political practice in itself?
Starting from these questions, the masterclass embarks on a film-historical and aesthetic exploration of African and Afro-diasporic cinema. It traces a path from colonial visual regimes and the struggles for interpretive authority over one’s own image to the anticolonial and pan-African film movements of the 1960s and 1970s, and on to contemporary diasporic and transnational forms of filmmaking.
The focus is on the works of Sembène Ousmane, Sarah Maldoror, Med Hondo, Haile Gerima, Safi Faye, and many others. For these filmmakers, cinema is not merely a medium of representation, but a space for self-empowerment, resistance, and collective memory. Their films do not portray community as a given unity. Instead, they reveal its contradictions, exclusions, and fractures, and explore the conditions under which solidarity can emerge at all.
Using selected films, the masterclass examines the ways in which community is constructed on screen: through shared spaces and memories, through voices and bodies, through work, migration, and resistance, but also through absences and disrupted senses of belonging.
The central question is who can speak, remember, and form an image of themselves—and what political spaces emerge when this possibility is collectively fought for. African and Afro-diasporic cinema is not presented here as a homogeneous cinematic tradition, but rather as a fluid network of relationships, experiences, and aesthetic practices that transcends national borders and historical contexts.
Enoka Ayemba is an independent film curator, film critic, and festival consultant, as well as a member of the selection committee for the Pan-African Film Festival FESPACO.

Maia Lekow, Christopher King, Kenia 2025, 100', English
Followed by a conversation with the curatorial and organisational team
Shiro and Wachuka have never tackled a project like this before, but their determination to
redefine what the formerly whites-only McMillan Memorial Library can be pushes them through each challenge. Their friendship gives us a glimpse into their warm personalities, and their candidness about their frustrations draws us into their journey, making us feel like we’re right there with them.
Directors Maia Lekow and Christopher King capture the complicated work to restore a library and the deeper challenges of confronting colonial legacies. As the library team sifts through archival images, they face conflicting emotions of anger and appreciation, grappling with what aspects of this colonial history should be remembered and what can be left behind. When are compromises justified in the larger conversation about decolonization? The result is a nuanced exploration of legacy and reclamation that extends beyond the library’s walls.

Wir schaffen einen Raum für Austausch, Vernetzung und Emp-owerment von Schwarzen, afrikanischen und afro-diasporischen Fachkräften aus pädagogischen und sozialen Berufsfeldern in Ostdeutschland (Einschließlich Berlin). Dieses Treffen ist eine Uberregionale Veranstaltung für People of African Descent (PAD) aus pädagogischen und sozialen Berufsfeldern (ob angestellt, freiberuflich oder auch ehrenamtlich aktiv).

Eingeladen sind alle PAD aus der Kinder- und Jugendarbeit, Lehrkräfte, Erzieherinnen, psychotherapeutisch Arbeitende, politische Bild-nerinnen, Beraterinnen, etc. Wir möchten dabei gemeinsam in den fachlichen Austausch kommen, was der Status Quo unserer Arbeit ist, welche Herausforderungen sich gerade in den aktuellen Zeiten stellen und was für uns Inspirationen & Visionen sind für unsere Arbeit.
Ziel ist es ein stärkeres Empowerment in den Blick zu nehmen, die Professionalisierung und Weiterentwicklung unserer Arbeitsbereiche vo-ranzutreiben, bereits bestehende Projekte zu reflektieren und an best practice Beispielen zu lernen, gemeinsam an Strategieentwicklungen zu arbeiten und in den tiefen Austausch über unsere Visionen zu kommen.