The Centre for Human Rights, University of Pretoria, in collaboration with the Global Campus of Human Rights, Cinema Human Rights and Advocacy, Irish Centre for Human Rights, NUI Galway and the Kingdom of the Netherlands cordially invite you to film screenings, presentations and discussions on African cinema and human rights.

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About the seminar on African cinema and human rights

In all its forms African cinema is an essential cultural and political resource, as there is a widespread commitment amongst practitioners to pursue filmmaking and film-related activities with the capacity to spur the development of inclusive, just, and sustainable societies.

Speakers

• Mette Hjort
  Professor of Film and Media Studies at the University of Copenhagen, Hjort’s publications include Small Nation, Global Cinema (University of Minnesota Press, 2005) and, most recently, the edited volumes The Education of the Filmmaker in Africa, the Americas, and the Middle East (Palgrave, 2013) and The Education of the Filmmaker in Europe, Australia, and Asia (Palgrave, 2013). Her current research focuses on transnational capacity building in the area of moving image production, with an emphasis on cultural rights and partnerships between the Global North and Global South. In connection with this project, she has collaborated with Gaston Kaboré’s alternative film school, Imagine, where she has assisted with student Newsreel productions during FESPACO 2011 and 2013. Working with Rod Stoneman and John Erni, she has twice mounted the Summer Workshop on Cinema and Human Rights in Hong Kong (funded by George Soros’s Open Society Foundations, with support from NUI Galway, Lingnan University, and Hong Kong Baptist University). She presented China’s Possible Futures: Independent Cinema and Hong Kong with EIUC in 2016. A member of the Danish Film Institute’s Board, Hjort is currently collaborating with the DFI’s Children and Youth Section, FilmLab:Palestine, and the Danish House in Ramallah, Palestine.
   
• Pervaiz Khan
  Pervaiz Khan is a writer, filmmaker, visual arts curator and artist who has made documentaries, short fictions, music videos, theatre, new-media installations; and worked on feature films. He was awarded the British Film Institute’s Paddy Whannel Award for innovation in film education and was Head of Media at the Triangle Arts & Media Centre, Aston University, Birmingham. In the 80s he established Vokani, Britain’s first touring circuit for black & third world films. In the late 80s and early 90s as the director / curator of the Third Cinema Focus (Birmingham International Film & TV Festival) he brought together over 60 filmmakers, writers and critics from across the globe. He has also curated for the National Film Theatre (London).
  
  For a decade he was a contributing editor of Sight & Sound. He co-edited, with John Akomfrah, ‘Third Scenario: Theory & Politics of Location’ for the film journal Framework. He trained as an actor with Joseph Mydell, and co-founded Duende Performance Company. He is interested in the role contemporary visual culture – photography, cinema, television and the web – plays in constructing our understanding of race, class, migration and nationhood. Pervaiz is a screenwriting lecturer in WSOA Film & TV. He is co-editor of Ellipses, the WSOA’s online creative practice journal. He is pursuing a PhD on Barney Simon and the workshop method.
   
• Ayo Sogunro
  Ayo Sogunro is a writer, social critic and lawyer. He is the author of The Wonderful Life of Senator Boniface and other Sorry Talesand, most recently, the collection of essays: Everything in Nigeria is Going to Kill You. His writings have earned references and publication in international and Nigerian media. Ayo has years of experience in human rights law and advocacy, with focus on the protection of sexual minorities in Nigeria. His literary essay, ‘One more nation bound in freedom: Themes from the Nigerian “anti-gay” law’ was shortlisted for the 2017 Gerald Kraak Award for African Writing. He has been part of the concept development and executive production teams for a human rights advocacy web series and short films including the award-winning ‘Hell or High Water’, which explores themes of sexuality, religion and social prejudices. He is part of the 2017 LLM class in Human Rights and Democratisation in Africa and currently works as a policy and human rights research consultant.
   
• Jae Maingard
  Dr Jacqueline Maingard is Reader in Film at the University of Bristol, which she joined in 1998, having taught film and television at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, for ten years prior to that. She had completed her PhD thesis on Strategies of Representation in Anti-apartheid Documentary Film and Video from 1976 to 1995. She has a wide range of work experience, primarily in Higher Education in South Africa and the UK, but also in community-based, Non-Governmental and anti-apartheid organisations in South Africa. Her research focus is on histories of the cinema in Africa, particularly South Africa. Her monograph,South African National Cinema (Routledge, 2007) is an historical overview of cinema produced in South Africa in relation to questions of race and national identity. It maps cinema’s role in the making, entrenching and undoing of apartheid from early silent film to anti-apartheid and post-apartheid films. She has curated and participated in many film events, and has contributed to several Cinema and Human Rights symposia held at Birkbeck, University of London, focusing on the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission and films that depict apartheid atrocities.
   
• Rod Stoneman
  Emeritus Professor Rod Stoneman was the Director of the Huston School of Film & Digital Media at the National University of Ireland, Galway. He was Chief Executive of Bord Scannán na hÉireann / the Irish Film Board until September 2003 and previously a Deputy Commissioning Editor in the Independent Film and Video Department at Channel 4 Television – purchasing and providing production finance for over 50 African feature films that were screened on British television. His 1993 article ‘African Cinema: Addressee Unknown’, has been published in 6 journals and 3 books. Hosted and participated in Cinema, Human Rights and Advocacy for six years at the Huston School in Galway with additional workshops in Ouagadougou, Amman, Hong Kong. He presented China’s Possible Futures: Independent Cinema and Hong Kong with EIUC in 2016.

Programme

Monday 4 December 2017
Seminar on African cinema and human rights
SRC Chambers, Conference Centre, University of Pretoria

08:30

• Departure from hotel
  (EIUC, Global Campus and HRDA Partners)
  Hotel reception

09:00 – 10:00

• EIUC / Global Campus of Human Rights Presentation

10:00 – 10:45

• ‘Rethinking the frame for human rights in Africa’ Rod Stoneman
  Using examples from African cinema, a discussion (including extracts and short films) of the cultural and political context for formulating contemporary human rights issues, direct speech.

10:45

• Film screening: Jas Boude (short film)
  Georgina Warner and Imraan Christian, South Africa, 2014

11:00 – 11:15

• Tea

11:15 – 12:15

• Scarred
  Judy Kibinge, Kenya, 2015

12:15 – 13:00

• ‘Filmmaking on the African continent: On the centrality of human rights thinking’ Mette Hjort
  In defense of human rights filmmaking: A response to the sceptics, based on Kenyan
  examples: A discussion of the impact of rights-based development policies on filmmaking milieus in Kenya

13:00 – 14:00

• Lunch
  Adlers Restaurant, University of Pretoria

14:00 – 14:45

• ‘Migration in / from Africa: Migrants on film’
  Jae Maingard
  A discussion of selected film examples representing migrants, their aspirations and ambi-
  tions, their journeys and in some cases deaths, their identities and subjective experiences

14:45 – 15:30

• Discussion: Pervaiz Khan and Ayo Sogunro
  Facilitator: Rod Stoneman

15:30 – 15:45

• Tea

15:45 – 17:30

• Film screening: Who’s Gonna Love Me Now?
  Barak Heymann & Tomer Heymann, Israel / UK 2016

18:00

• Departure for dinner
  (Global Campus, EIUC, HRDA Partners and Tutors only)
  Foyer, Faculty of Law

19:00 – 22:00

• Braai
  (Global Campus, EIUC, HRDA Partners and Tutors only)
  Residence of Prof Christof Heyns