The following list presents panel proposals that have been received following the call for panel proposals posted in June 2003. Panels are arranged alphabetically (according to title).

Chair: Victoria Rovine, University of Iowa Museum of Art (USA)

This panel addresses Africa’s role as both an active agent in and a source of inspiration for global fashion design. Participants will examine the work of designers from Africa, Europe, and elsewhere, analyzing the diverse artistic strategies by which they make reference to Africa. Fashion designers have mobilized forms and materials, as well as personal identities and marketing strategies, to signify Africa as a specific location or as a generalized "Other." The growing visibility of African fashion in international venues provides rich opportunities to examine the negotiations by which the continent’s "traditional" attire has been adapted, transformed, or discarded by contemporary designers.

Contact:

Victoria Rovine
University of Iowa Museum of Art
150 N. Riverside Drive 110 MA
Iowa City, IA 52242-1789
USA
Tel: +1 (319) 353-2469
Fax: +1 (319) 335-3577
victoria-rovine@uiowa.edu

Chair: Tavy Aherne, Indiana University (USA)

Textiles, due to their nature as easily transportable and widely desired commodities, cross boundaries that are not only geographical, but also political, cultural, social, ethnic, economic, and gendered. Thus, they are particularly useful for dealing with such complex domains as the exchange of ideas and practices, and the manipulation and negotiation of ethnicity. The functions of cloths may fluctuate, as part of ongoing, ever-changing processes which reflect new concerns, inspirations, and patronage. Paper proposals are requested from individuals studying textiles' changing contexts over time, space, and across cultures, to create new forms, interpretations, meanings, and contexts of use.

Contact:

Tavy Aherne
2261 Bent Tree Drive
Bloomington, IN 47401
USA
Tel: +1 (812) 323-9173
taherne@indiana.edu

Co-chairs: Pamela Allara, Brandeis University (USA); Kyle D. Kauffman, Wellesley College (USA); and Marilyn Martin, Iziko Museums of Cape Town (South Africa)

HIV/Aids is arguably the most significant social, economic, and political issue facing South Africa today. Yet, few visual artists have engaged meaningfully with the subject in their work. This is in stark contrast to the way South African artists confronted other major social evils, such as apartheid.

Before 1994, much of the art produced in South Africa was confrontational and political in nature. For the politically engaged artists under apartheid there was no doubt about the identity of the target. After 1994, both the challenges and the possibilities have become more complex, ambivalent, and unpredictable. The course of South African art changed from confrontation to reconciliation and during the honeymoon years of the new democracy there were calls for artists to put aside political considerations and to find new themes and images. Indeed, it seemed that

a number of artists with powerful messages in the pre-1994 era had lost their voices. Some turned inward to explore personal narratives and dramas, investigating identity, sexual and gender politics and roles, while others delved into history and memory.

Few artists have confronted the Aids crisis. Why? There is a range of possible answers. Perhaps, many artists do not feel the deep personal connection to the issue of Aids that they did to apartheid. Perhaps, after the struggle for political liberation, socially engaged artists were tired and felt the need for more personal, non-political subjects for their work. Another possible reason could be that white artists, who comprise the majority of commercially successful artists in South Africa, do not feel they can reasonable speak for the black majority, the group most affected by Aids. In addition, black artists may find the subject a very difficult issue, involving sexual practices that are hard to change in a patriarchal culture. Or, perhaps it is even that in an increasingly open and market-oriented art scene some artists feel that if they produce works on the topic of Aids that they will not be sellable. Whatever the reasons, the production of art works on the subject of HIV/Aids is surprising low, given the importance and impact on society.

This panel will consist of both scholars and artists to critically examine the body of artwork that has been produced in South Africa on the subject of HIV/Aids and also try to understand why there is a dearth of artists willing to engage the topic.

Contact:

Kyle D. Kauffman
Department of Economics
Wellesley College
Wellesley, MA 02481
Tel: +1 (781) 283-2153
Fax: +1 (781) 283-2177 (Fax)
kkauffman@wellesley.edu

Co-chairs: Rebecca Martin Nagy, Samuel P. Harn Museum of Art, University of Florida (USA) and Achamyeleh Debela, North Carolina Central University (USA)

Ethiopian artists working in their own country and abroad are increasingly gaining recognition as major figures in the international art world, as evidenced by recent one person and group shows of their work and by the inclusion of Ethiopian artists in group shows of pan-African and international scope. Scholarly research on contemporary African art has increased, and there is an encouraging trend among major museums to acquire work by contemporary African artists, including Ethiopians. Some critics and art historians would argue that the Ethiopian heritage of contemporary, academically trained artists is largely irrelevant in considering their work. We believe, however, that the work of these artists should be considered in terms of both continuity with the past and the change that is all but inevitable given the ubiquity of global exchange. In addition to academically trained artists, others continue to work in the time-honored genres of mural painting, icon painting, and metalworking. Having served apprenticeships under established masters, they sell their work to the church and local patrons who employ it for traditional purposes and to local and foreign patrons who value the work for its craftsmanship and aesthetic appeal. We invite papers on various aspects of contemporary art and artists in Ethiopia and the Diaspora, including traditional and academically trained artists. We welcome papers representing differing points of view about the relevance of looking for the expression of a distinctively Ethiopian identity in the work of contemporary artists.

Contact:

Rebecca M. Nagy
Harn Museum of Art
University of Florida
PO Box 112700
Gainesville, FL 32611-2700
Tel: +1 (352) 392-9826
Fax: +1 (352) 392-3892
rnagy@harn.ufl.edu

Chair: Sunanda K. Sanyal, The Art Institute of Boston at Lesley University (USA)

In recent years, works of contemporary African artists —primarily painters-- with little or no art school training have drawn a fair number of Western curators, collectors, and scholars. Identified as "self-taught", "popular" or "urban", and occasionally organized in groups and workshops, such artists produce both site-specific and portable images, most frequently figurative social narratives with formal and iconographic strategies significantly different from those employed by academically trained artists. The market’s enthusiasm for this kind of art, however, has raised questions. While many of its gallery advocates have insisted that it demonstrates an "original" pictorial approach, an "African" way of seeing, unlike the allegedly derivative tendencies of the contemporary enterprise grounded in institutional art training; critics of this view identify such preference as an essentialist fascination for a form of neo-primitivism, a neo-colonial urge to legitimize a signifier of the Third World too benign to challenge the West’s latent claim to cultural superiority.

The panel attempts to examine the production, reception and marketing of this genre of art in light of the above debate. What is the role of these artists, vis-à-vis that of art school graduates, in contemporary Africa’s response to the global art scene? How differently do the works of the two groups address notions of tradition and modernity? Has scholarly research on the "self-taught" artists (Fabian, Jewsiewicki, Court) problematized their popular reception as authentic storytellers in the Euro-American art market? Art historians, artists, critics, and curators are invited to explore such questions to generate a productive discussion on the subject.

Contact:

Sunanda K. Sanyal
The Art Institute of Boston at Lesley University
700, Beacon Street Boston, MA 02215
USA
Tel: +1 (617) 585-6693
Fax: +1 (617) 437-1226
ssanyal@aiboston.edu

Co-chairs: Judith Bettelheim, San Francisco State University (USA), and Kristine Juncker, Columbia University (USA)

Contact:

Kristine Juncker
145 Pinckney St, #330
Boston, MA 02114
USA
Tel. +1 (617) 720-2726
krj6@columbia.edu

Co-chairs: Andrea Frohne, Dickinson College (USA), and Onyile Bassey Onyile, Georgia Southern University (USA)

This panel seeks to examine the complex connections between art and colonial ideology. How has colonialism influenced, or been imbued, in the arts of many African societies? Issues to consider are the geographic, symbolic, political, aesthetic, religious, iconographic, economic, stylistic, or social routes induced by colonialism in arts of the African world. Additional areas might include Christianity, gender, or "race". Conversely, why has the history of colonialism at times been written out of African art studies?

This panel will include both "traditional" and contemporary artists. Also, what models of visual theory might accommodate the multivalence of Africa’s arts, identities and experiences? We hope to offer innovative strategies for examining the visual culture that has arisen from the political impact of colonialism.

Contact:

Andrea Frohne
Department of Art and Art History
Dickinson College
Carlisle, PA 17013
USA
Tel: +1 (607) 724-3761
Fax: +1 (717) 245-1937
frohnea@dickinson.edu

or

Onyile Bassey Onyile
Department of Art
Georgia Southern University
Statesboro, GA 30460
USA
Tel: +1 (912) 541-2312
bi90411@binghamton.edu

Chair: Christine Mullen Kreamer, National Museum of African Art, Washington DC (USA)

Proposals are requested from individuals interested in exploring the process of change observed when conducting art historical research in Africa. The premise is that return trips to the field provide the opportunity to conduct research that compares earlier data with recent findings and to consider the motivations, impact and personalities connected with changes that occur over time. What are the research questions and methodologies guiding return research and the documentation of change? What significance may be attributed to changes over time in aesthetic concepts and in the forms, techniques and meanings of specific art forms or categories of art? How have the arts been impacted by access to new materials or sources of inspiration? Who are the key individuals involved in the making, using or marketing of arts over time? Are there areas of artistic production that evince relatively little change over time? Papers exploring these and other issues relating to change over time in African visual arts are most welcome.

Contact:

Christine Mullen Kreamer
National Museum of African Art, MRC 708
Smithsonian Institution
PO Box 37012
Washington DC 20013-7012
USA
Tel: +1 (202) 357-4600, ext. 236
Fax: +1 (202) 357-4879
kreamerc@nmafa.si.edu

Chair: Philip M. Peek, Drew University (USA)

Twin births are marked as serious matters, for better or worse, throughout Africa. Often these twin individuals are represented by carvings, but there are other images of doubling as well, such as spirit doubles and animal familiars. As the Senufo assert: "Twins have perfect knowledge of each other." That perfect communion is sought by diviners, by healers, by any individual seeking rapport with spiritual

entities in the other world. These endeavors are aided and activated by visual and verbal arts. We hope to investigate these artistic expressions of twins and doubling in African And African American cultures in order to reveal the deeper philosophical and epistemological meanings they embody.

Contact:

Philip M. Peek
Dept. of Anthropology
Drew University
Madison, NJ 07940
USA
Tel: +1 (973) 408-3383
Fax: +1 (973) 408-3768
ppeek@drew.edu

Co-chairs: Laurie Ann Farrell, Museum for African Art, New York (USA), and John Peffer, Northwestern University (USA)

This panel is a platform for new ideas on what constitutes the African legacy of diaspora. We invite papers, which present novel approaches to the study of African art as something that is internationally distributed, from the postcolonial world and from other historical periods. For example, how do current discussions of global identities in contemporary art impact definitions of older forms of continental African art? How can new scholarship on "global" art avoid homogenizing individual artistic practices? And how can "traditional" African art objects themselves, as collected and reproduced items, be seen to operate as a sort of diaspora of images?

Contact:

Laurie Ann Farrell
Museum for African Art
36-01 43rd Ave., 3rd Floor
Long Island City, NY 11101
USA
Tel: +1 (718) 784-7700 ext. 111
Fax: +1 (718) 784-7718
lafarrell@africanart.org

Co-chairs: Sandra Klopper, University of Stellenbosch (South Africa), and Kim Miller, Transylvania University (USA)

In recent years, scholars have marveled at the inventive capacities of African artists who, due to their impoverished circumstances, are forced to rely on the use of recycled materials for artistic expression as well as for economic survival. More often than not, these studies tend to exclude examples from South Africa, presumably because it enjoys comparatively high levels of consumption and a widespread reliance on cheap, locally manufactured goods.

Unlike these conventional studies on recycled art in Africa, this panel explores the element of poverty in South African art in relation to both its production and its consumption. Thus while certain art forms and practices are determined by the poverty of their makers, especially in rural areas, other forms use poverty as a subject in order to appeal to extended markets. In some cases, artists concurrently experience and express the condition of poverty. Panel participants are asked to offer a series of case studies on the iconographies of poverty in South African Art from a variety of practical and theoretical perspectives.

Contact:

Kim Miller
Department of Art
Transylvania University
300 N Broadway
Lexington, KY 40508
USA
Tel: +1 (859) 281-3543
Fax: +1 (859) 233-8797
kamiller@transy.edu

Co-chairs: Henry Drewal, University of Wisconsin (USA), and Allen Roberts, University of California, Los Angeles (USA)

Indian Ocean World histories, cultures and arts are the result of complex, cross-cultural, and multi-directional currents. Africans have been an important presence in the Indian Ocean World in such diverse roles as traders, merchants, sailors, artists and architects, professional soldiers, court musicians, bureaucrats, regents, saints, rulers, etc. for more than 1000 years. This panel seeks to present aspects of this diverse cultural world under the broad theme of arts and Identities. We encourage papers that illuminate the artistic interactions and impacts of various African peoples in specific sites and eras.

Contact:

Henry J. Drewal
Department of Art History — Elvehem Museum of Art
University of Wisconsin — Madison
800 University Avenue
Madison, WI 53706
USA
Tel: +1 (608) 263-9362
Fax: +1 (608) 265-6425
hjdrewal@wisc.edu

Allen F. Roberts
James S. Coleman African Studies Center
10244 Bunche Hall, Box 951310
University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA)
Los Angeles, CA 90095-1310 USA
Tel: +01 (310)825-3686
FAX: +01 (310)206-2250
aroberts@arts.ucla.edu

Chair: Peter Mark, Wesleyan University (USA)
The precolonial history of the Sahara and of the sahel correctly emphasizes the role of Islam in the development of trade networks, state formation, and artistic creation. Judaism, by contrast, has been viewed as having no significant historical role in West Africa;  A re-reading of local Saharan art forms, including leather working and metal casting, and the recent discovery of Inquisition records, together suggest a radically different interpretation. Historical sources confirm the presence of Jewish merchants in the southern Sahara, as early as the 16th century. Inquisition records document the existence of communities of Jewish merchants in Senegambia.

Together, these new sources, both material culture and written records, necessitate a radical revision of our assessment both of Muslim-Jewish relations and of the role of Jewish merchants in the evolution of sahelian culture in the Early Modern period.

Contact:

Peter Mark
Department of Art and Art History
Wesleyan University
Middletown, CT 06459
USA
Tel: +1 (860) 347-9698
pmark@wesleyan.edu

PANEL 14

Chair: Martha G. Anderson, Alfred University (USA)

This panel will examine the nexus between the pan-African spirit or complex known (in various guises) as Mami Wata and locally named water spirits, for whom the pidgin term mami wata sometimes serves as a gloss. The arts, beliefs, and practices associated with mami watas both intersect with and diverge from those identified with Mami Wata. Panelists may present papers on Mami Wata or mami watas in Africa and the Diaspora. In keeping with the theme of the Triennial, they should address the roots of widespread ideas and practices and consider the routes these may have traveled.

Contact:

Martha G. Anderson
Alfred University
64 W. University St.
Alfred, NY 14802
USA
Tel: +1 (607) 587-9550
fanderson@alfred.edu

Co-chairs: Ute Roeschenthaler, University of Frankfurt (Germany),and Eli Bentor, Appalachian State University (USA)

In the last decades, many African countries have experienced profound political changes from structural adjustment programs, a transition to multiparty democracy or an end of a military regime, to a descent into the chaos of a civil war. The shift toward studying modern art in Africa marked a move from the traditional rural setting to urban contexts of art making. In urban settings, it seems natural to study the political aspects of art. Yet, we still often think of rural arts as part of a ‘traditional’ world unaffected by national and international events. Recent political processes across the continent have profound impacts on cultural production even in the most remote rural areas. This panel will look at the grass root artistic reactions to national and global transformation. We invite paper proposals examining festivals, dances, shrines and other forms of ‘traditional arts’ in their current transformations.

Contact:

Ute Roeschenthaler
Institut fuer Historische Ethnologie
University of Frankfurt
Grueneburgplatz 1
60323 Frankfurt
Germany
Roeschenthaler@em.uni-frankfurt.de

Eli Bentor
Department of Art
Appalachian State University
Boone, NC 28608
USA
Tel: +1 (828) 262-2579
Fax: +1(828) 262-6756
bentore@appstate.edu

Chair: Monica Blackmun Visonà, Metropolitan State College (USA)

While the first studies of African architecture to appear in English documented the formal characteristics of buildings, French writings often focused upon the philosophical values assigned to both spaces and structures.  How do recent research projects either refine or refute the French insistence that African cultures have constructed environments in response to social and cosmological systems of thought? How have changing spatial configurations in African homes, compounds, shrines, towns and cities prompted new approaches to the study of architecture, and how are these approaches still shaped by the work of earlier scholars? 

Contact: 

Monica Blackmun Visonà
Department of Art
Metropolitan State College
USA
Tel: +1 (303) 556-3090
visonam@mscd.edu

Chair: Joanne B. Eicher, University of Minnesota (USA)

In the last few decades, African nationals have been migrating to North America, the UK and Europe as refugees and immigrants, often remaining to put down new roots. This panel explores issues of identity as expressed through dress by Africans who are now "Out of Africa." Do patterns of gender, religion, occupation, and/or ethnic background encourage the production and reproduction of dress signifying a link to African heritage? Possible papers could include examples such as Somalis who wear "ethnic dress" in Minnesota, or Igbo and Kalabari who wear African clothing for their ethnic festivals.

Contact:

Joanne B. Eicher
Dept of Design, Housing, and Apparel
University of Minnesota
1985 Buford Avenue
St. Paul, MN 55108
USA
Tel: +1 (612) 624-7710 (office), and +1 (651) 645-2914 (home)
Fax: +1 (612) 624-2750
jeicher@che.umn.edu

Chair: TBA

Africanists' description of local modernities needs further conceptual expansion. Scholars have characterized modernity as an invention of the west, heavy on the hegemony; others have considered African modernities as inherently resistant to the west. The transfer of artistic practices is considerably more complex: "traditions" themselves bear witness to their eclectic sources, coming from both nearby and faraway. The importance of the import is relevant only in that artistic practices and influences shift, evolve, and disappear such as artists, audiences and patrons see fit. It is not surprising that engagement within the context of local cultures is as much a part of the story as anything else. Potential panelists are encouraged to present papers contributing to a deeper understanding of these issues.

Contact: 

Erin Haney
The School of Oriental and African Studies, London
35C Parkhurst Road
London N7 0LR
United Kingdom
Tel: +44 207.687.1502
erinlhaney@hotmail.com

Chair: Linda Giles

Although no panel abstract was received, there might be interest in this topic. For information please contact:

Linda L. Giles
612 N. School
Normal, IL 61761
USA
Tel: +1 (309) 452-8821
llgiles66@hotmail.com

Co-chairs: Boureima Tiékoroni Diamitani, West African Museums Programme, Dakar (Senegal), and Agbenyega Adedze, Illinois State University (USA)

The museum occupies a very important segment of the African cultural landscape; however, many museum professionals fail to utilize these institutions to their full potential due to the myriad problems besetting them. Several meetings, conferences, and workshops have been organized since the inception of museums in Africa where the recurrent problems are debated without any concrete solutions. The present panel The African Museum in the New Millennium seeks to exhort African museum professionals to critically examine historically the various facets of this all-important cultural establishment. They will provide a comprehensive analysis relevant to the revival and renaissance of African museums. Panelist would be encouraged to propose cost effective African solutions for their museums rather than external ideas that may not be relevant to Africa. While ensuring that all the regions of Africa are covered in the various topics, participants are advised to provide a vision that will carry the African museum through the 21^st century.

Topics might include: (1) A Historical Introduction - the genesis and development of museums in Africa (private, community, specialized, and national museums) to the present; (2) Definitions and Legal Status of Museums in Africa; (3) Exhibitions in the African Museum - Policies and Challenges; (4) Managing an African Museum - Administrative practice, development, etc in private, community, specialized, and national museums; (5) Collecting and Conserving African Material Culture - How are African objects constituted (do we have collection policies?) in the museum and the challenges of conservation; (6) Technology and the African Museum - how useful has it been? Impact of the Information Technology on the museum, if any.

Contact:

Boureima Tiékoroni Diamitani
West African Museums Programme (WAMP)
BP 357 Dakar
Senegal

or

Agbenyega Adedze
Illinois State University
Department of History
334 Schroeder Hall
Normal, IL 61790
Adedze@ilstu.edu

This panel explores changes in African visual practices that have been brought about not by physical movement, but rather by ideological movement. As such, the panel is interested in papers that explore the impact that political liberation has had on the art of Africa and its diaspora. Though not necessarily settled on a South African context, papers may well focus on postapartheid South Africa as one instance where a radical change in government has affected the visual arts in both constructive and detrimental ways. While democracy has brought international exposure and mobility for many artists, it has also seemingly erased the need for "resistance" or "struggle" art and photography. In the face of this, what new themes are being articulated? What new struggles waged? How has democracy affected production and access to resources, if at all? These and other questions will stand central to this session.

Contact:

Liese van der Watt
University of Cape Town
Department of Historical Studies
Private Bag
Rondebosch 7700
Cape Town
South Africa

This panel hopes to offer new insights on an old problem … what is the

relationship between contemporary art and the so-called traditional arts of Africa. I am just as interested in papers that take a critical view of how contemporary artists use, abuse, or appropriate traditional forms as in ones that explore how traditional arts are rescued, transformed, and enriched by contemporary art practices.

Contact:

Barbara Frank
Department of Art
Stony Brook University
Stony Brook, NY 11794-5400
USA
Tel: +1 (631) 632-7264
Fax: +1 (631) 632-7261
bfrank@ms.cc.sunysb.edu

Chair: Bill Hart, University of Ulster (Northern Ireland)

The Upper Guinea Coast between Senegambia and Sierra Leone historically has been a site of interaction between Africa and the outside world and between the coastal peoples and the civilizations of the Sahel. The panel will examine how these cultural influences manifest themselves in the arts of the area and, drawing upon the wealth of historical sources available for Upper Guinea, attempt to situate some of these artistic manifestations within the broad history of the area.

Contact:

Bill Hart
University of Ulster
Coleraine
Northern Ireland
BT52 1SA
Tel.: +44 (0)28-7032-4311
Fax: +44 (0)28-7032-4952
wa.hart@ulster.ac.uk

In paintings, beadwork, textiles, dress and videos, and more recently in elaborately decorated marriage letters, Yoruba popular cultures have come to be potent signifiers not only of Yoruba identities, but of the globalizing reach of an African culture. This panel will examine Yoruba popular cultures, focusing on the visual arts in Nigeria and their reverberations throughout the African Diaspora. It also will address their responsive, incorporative relation to cultural materials from outside the psycho-geographical space of Yorubaland. Such selective incorporation, wedded to a distinctive cultural tenacity, it is argued, is one of the enduring hallmarks of Yoruba artistic endeavor.

Contact:

David Doris
Center for Afroamerican and African Studies and the Department of the History of Art
170B Tappan Hall
University of Michigan
Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1357
Tel: +1 (734) 764-6214
Fax: +1 (734) 763-0543
daviddoris@earthlink.net

or

Elisha P. Renne
Center for Afroamerican and African Studies and the Department of Anthropology
4700 Haven Hall
University of Michigan
Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1045
Tel: +1 (734) 764-9917
Fax: +1 (734) 763-0543
erenne@umich.edu

Chair: Christraud M. Geary, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (USA)

In recent years, collecting African art, be it in institutional or private settings, has changed fundamentally. Works, such as figurative sculptures and masks predominantly from West and Central Africa, were the mainstay of collecting African art throughout much of the 20^th century. Now they have become increasingly rare and prohibitively expensive. Fakes abound, cashing in on this lucrative market. The stricter implementation of antiquities legislation in African countries and in the U.S., and the importance of provenance have also changed the face of collecting. Thus, institutional and private collectors turned to other types of objects, among them metal work, currency, pottery, and textiles. This changing emphasis echoes and follows, of course, shifts in scholarly interest away from examining the classic canon of African art, as constituted by art historians and collectors in the first half of the 20^th century. Among the more recent entries in the ever-broadening field of what constitutes collectibles are works from formerly underrepresented regions, such as objects from Eastern and Southern Africa, works by contemporary African artists who participate in the global art scene, by African photographers, and local artists in urban African settings. Participants in this round table are encouraged to explore collecting from different perspectives, addressing such issues as their own or institutional collecting strategies and assessing current trends and challenges.

Contact:

Christraud M. Geary
Department of the Arts of Asia, Oceania, and Africa
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
465 Huntington Avenue
Boston, MA 02215
Tel: +1 (617) 369-3226
Fax: +1 (617) 859-7031
cgeary@mfa.org

Chair: Susan Vogel, Prince Street Pictures, Inc., New York (USA)

Many African art historians and anthropologists have found themselves making films — some drawn to record the movement of ritual or dance in the field, others compelled by the needs of an exhibition or institution. This Round Table is addressed to them and their working methods. It is not primarily concerned with films made by documentarians who work in Ghana today and in Chile next month.

Professors and curators will discuss their singular experiences and describe their personal process from beginning to end for making a successful film in Africa. Participants will show a 2 minute sample of

their film, and describe briefly 1) the research, planning, budgeting, and funding; 2) crew, equipment and methods of location filming; 3) editing, sound mix, and titling; 4) distribution. They will conclude with a brief and candid assessment of their own satisfaction with the results. The discussion will be practical, but not technical, will focus on what has been learned from good and bad experiences, and will reveal a surprising variety of hybrid processes, styles, and possible results.

We are seeking African art historians and anthropologists who have already completed and distributed films and can discuss a variety of specific experiences: you were the writer/director, cameraperson, sound and maybe editor; you were writer/director working with a professional crew and editor; you were on location advisor to a director/producer and crew; you were writer/director assembling archival material; you were consultant or writer not on location; you were writer but not director; and other permutations.

Contact:

Susan Vogel
Prince Street Pictures, Inc.
112 Prince Street
New York, N.Y. 10012-3160
Tel: +1 (212) 966-7787
Fax: +1 (212) 431-3930
svogel@igc.org