AfryKamera 2023 | PANEL Unsettling the Narratives: Women, Film & Positioning of African Woman

DISCUSSION PANEL: Unsettling the Narratives: Women, Film & Positioning of African Woman of the Future, host: Dr Ezinne Ezepue, guests: Wanjiru Kinyanjui (filmmaker, writer, jury and curator at the festival), Branwen Okpako (director, Return to Chibok), Babetida Sadjo (director of Hematoma, actress in Our Father the Devil) FREE ENTRANCE (limit of spots) Panel will be held in ENGLISH! African proverb says, "until lions have their own historians, tales of hunting will always glorify the hunter." These words encapsulate the essence of this panel's exploration: Unsettling the Narratives. The history of women in Africa is a narrative marked by double colonization - first by Western colonial powers and then by the patriarchal order post-colonialism. Colonialism, often interwoven with religious influence, wrought significant changes in African societies, empowering men, redefining labour dynamics, and relegating women's roles to be traditional and seemingly insignificant. This transformation resulted in women's exclusion from various careers, effectively denying them opportunities to effect change. The fieriness that once defined pre-colonial and colonial African women gave way to a prescribed identity for postcolonial women, whose untold stories and unsung victories remained hidden, much like the lions in the proverb. dr Ezinne Ezepue Is a lecturer of film at the University of Nigeria where she teaches film studies, Nollywood studies and documentary filmmaking. She has a BA (Nigeria) in Theatre & Film Studies, MA (Birmingham) in Film & Television and a PhD (Birmingham) in Media Studies. As part of her vision to empower African youths to tell authentic African stories, she hosts Africa on Script Initiative, a scriptwriting workshop which aims at rebranding Africa and inspiring youths to productivity through storytelling. Ezinne received her doctorate in 2018 with a thesis which interrogated a possible gentrification of Nollywood. She has researched Nollywood extensively and is published in books and journals. A Chevening scholar and TETFund (Tertiary Education Trust Fund) beneficiary, Ezinne is currently pursuing an early career postdoctoral research in African storytelling under the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. Her project, African Folktale: Storytelling for Sustainable Development, aims at discovering ways to reimagine and adapt African folktales into contemporary film narratives for sustainable development. Her interest in film stems from the medium's potential to inspire and model new ideologies and transformations. Ezinne is interested in stories that are authentically African. In addition to being an African film scholar and critic, Ezinne has critical interest in documentary and reality filmmaking.

DISCUSSION PANEL: Unsettling the Narratives: Women, Film & Positioning of African Woman of the Future, host: Dr Ezinne Ezepue, guests: Wanjiru Kinyanjui (filmmaker, writer, jury and curator at the festival), Branwen Okpako (director, Return to Chibok), Babetida Sadjo (director of Hematoma, actress in Our Father the Devil) FREE ENTRANCE (limit of spots) Panel will be held in ENGLISH! African proverb says, "until lions have their own historians, tales of hunting will always glorify the hunter." These words encapsulate the essence of this panel's exploration: Unsettling the Narratives. The history of women in Africa is a narrative marked by double colonization - first by Western colonial powers and then by the patriarchal order post-colonialism. Colonialism, often interwoven with religious influence, wrought significant changes in African societies, empowering men, redefining labour dynamics, and relegating women's roles to be traditional and seemingly insignificant. This transformatio...