How African philosophies inspired a new approach to staging film festivals in Manchester

African philosophies including exploring how lessons from the past can shape the present and near future have inspired a film festival coming to Manchester.

See My World, a day dedicated to independent creators from across the African diaspora in the north of England, will take place at the Contact theatre on 21 November.

The festival is part of See My World’s year-round programme showcasing pan-African arts, culture and events.

It reflects the determination among creatives and activists in Manchester to build on the legacy of the 1945 Pan-African Congress in Manchester – which connected luminaries of postwar independence movements with a shared vision of liberation – after last year’s 80th anniversary commemorations.

See My World’s CEO and artistic director, Tunde Adekoya, said this month’s film festival was taking inspiration from across the spectrum of pan-African thought, including the works of Kenyan writers John Mbiti, an Anglican theologian who died in 2019, and Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, the author of the groundbreaking 1986 book Decolonising the Mind who died last year.

Both writers rejected the colonial conceit that African thought was inferior, stressed the importance of community and saw reclaiming African ways of knowing as essential to a people’s self-understanding.

While Mbiti sought common ground between African religions and Christianity, Ngũgĩ was a Marxist. He argued colonialism was motivated by cultural and economic conquest, and that European powers used language as their sharpest instrument. Ngũgĩ famously abandoned English to write in Gikuyu, a Bantu language mainly spoken in Kenya and criticised the role missionary Christianity played in colonial rule.

Adekoya said: “It’s a day dedicated to pan-African and global majority films from the north of England with exclusive premieres of documentaries we’ve been working on, which weave together expressions of liberation through art forms like poetry and dance.

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“The whole idea is that it’s like a playground in search of strategies of liberation, using the festival as a way to explore different philosophies.

“John Mbiti explores the philosophy and spiritual understandings of time through the concept of Sasa na Zamani – in which the past informs everything that happens moving forward. That reflects how we constantly go back to pan-African histories to inform how we progress.”

Film-makers have been invited to submit films lasting up to 30 minutes from across genres, with no screening fees charged.

As well as submissions, the festival will feature documentaries produced by See My World. They include Homage, a “cinematic love letter to dance” that traces a culture through present-day portraits illustrating dance artists and archival material from Manchester, telling a story of joy, loss, migration, rhythm and resistance. Meanwhile, Poetic Justice explores how pan-African thought and Manchester’s poetry scene speak across decades.

Adekoya added: “The idea is that we would go against the norm of how film festivals are, because when we think about decolonisation, we think about how structures have been created to alienate and exclude communities.

“So we thought our film festival would look more at how we make film accessible and how stories that deserve to be seen get seen. Throughout the day we will have different activities, from exhibitions to explorations of our performances, discussions, Q&As, insights into directors’ processes, and workshops.

“We’ve been looking for literature and concepts that inform us and give us an understanding of who we truly are. And as works from thinkers like John Mbiti have come into our sphere, they have really emboldened us to think differently about our place in the world and what we do.”

See My World film festival runs from 2pm to 11pm on Saturday 21 November at Contact theatre, Oxford Road, Manchester.