Duncan Tarrant interviews the leading actor Gudrun Columbus Mwanyika of the film "Tug of War" that was presented at the 2023 Cinema Africa film festival in Bayreuth. Apart from being an actor Gudrun Columbus Mwanyika from Tanzania is also a producer and filmmaker. During the film festival he represented the movie "Vuta N‘Kuvute" (Tug of War) - a feature-length fiction based on Adam Shafis award-winning Swahili novel. The story explores a forbidden romance between star-crossed lovers against the backdrop of 1950s colonial Zanzibar. Young Indian-Zanzibari Yasmin flees from her arranged marriage and meets Dengé, a young revolutionary. Cinema Africa 2023 in Bayreuth was organised by the Africa Multiple Cluster of Excellence at the University of Bayreuth and curated by Prof. Dr. Ute Fendler.

Filmmaker and producer Paméla Diop was guest of the Africa Multiple Cluster of Excellence as part of the film festival Cinema Africa 2023 in Bayreuth. She presented her movie "Saloum" a Western type thriller set in the Senegalese region of the the same name. In this interview Paméla Diop talks with Marie Tsogo and Thierry Boudjekeu about making "Saloum" in particular and the process of African filmmaking in a more general sense.

In this interview, Gilbert Shang-Ndi and Marie Nadège Tsogo speak with filmmaker Dani Kouyaté about his award-winning film Katanga – The Dance of the Scorpions, presented at the Cinema Africa Bayreuth Film Festival in 2026. Kouyaté discusses adapting Shakespeare’s Macbeth into a dreamlike political tale set in the fictional kingdom of Ganzurgu, exploring power, prophecy, and ambition through an African lens. The film, performed in Mooré with English subtitles, won the FESPACO Yennenga Golden Stallion in 2025.

Samuel Abiola Robinson was our guest for the November edition of the Cinema Africa film festival 2024/25. The Nigerian actor stars in the movie "Dilli Dark" that was presented on 11.11.2024 in Cineplex Bayreuth. Before Robinson was present for the screening and subsequent discussion, he sat with the festival's organiser Prof. Dr. Ute Fendler for an interview talking about his career, life in New Delhi and forthcoming projects.

In this interview, director Mo Harawe discusses his debut feature film "The Village Next to Paradise", presented at the Cinema Africa Festival 2024–2025 in Bayreuth. In conversation with Prof. Dr. Ute Fendler, organiser and curator of the festival, Harawe reflects on the film’s portrayal of family life in a rural Somali village shaped by economic hardship, environmental pressures and the lingering effects of conflict. He also discusses his approach to storytelling, his use of non-professional actors, and his intention to foreground everyday experiences beyond dominant narratives. The interview was recorded as part of the 16th edition of the Cinema Africa Festival, organised by the Africa Multiple Cluster of Excellence at the University of Bayreuth.

Mohamed Kordofani's critically acclaimed movie "Goodbye Julia" is his first feature film. As part of the 16th edition of Cinema Africa Kordofani came to Bayreuth to present his film to the Bayreuth public. Maryam Shojaei and Bakheit Nur had the chance to sit down with him and ask him a few questions on his career, his film and the political background that frames this extraordinary work of art.

In his interview, director Sana Na N’Hada discusses his film Nome, presented at the Cinema Africa Festival 2024–2025 in Bayreuth. The conversation, conducted by festival organiser Prof. Dr. Ute Fendler and doctoral researcher Marie Tsogo, explores the film’s engagement with Guinea-Bissau’s struggle for independence, as well as its focus on memory, disillusionment and the complexities of post-revolutionary experience. N’Hada also reflects on his use of archival material and the personal and historical dimensions that shape the film. The interview was recorded as part of the 16th edition of the Cinema Africa Festival, curated by Prof. Dr. Ute Fendler and funded by the Africa Multiple Cluster of Excellence at the University of Bayreuth.

The 12th edition of "Cinema Africa" will be presented by the Africa Multiple Cluster of Excellence between 21 and 24 November 2019. Four excellent films have been chosen for this year's festival - and the directors will be present for discussions after the showings.

Cinema Africa Bayreuth goes into a new round! The first screening took place on 10 November 2025 at Cineplex Bayreuth where a double feature presented two Angolan films "Ar condicionado" and "Our Lady of the Chinese Shop". Ery Claver, who directed the latter and was responsible for cinematography in the former, was present in Bayreuth and answered the questions of the audience. To present two Angolan films to the Bayreuth public could not have come at a better timing as Angola celebrated its 50 anniversary of independence on 11 November 2025. Ery Claver also sat down with Prof. Dr. Ute Fendler, initiator and curator of the Bayreuth film festival, and Adebanjo Oreoluwa Baderin, who is part of the Cinema Africa organisational team to answer their questions on the thoughts that went into making these two special films.

In this conversation, Adebanjo Baderin sits down with Ghanaian producer Kofi Owusu-Afriyie to talk about his work and his participation in the Cinema Africa Bayreuth Film Festival. They discuss Owusu-Afriyie’s journey in film, including his role in bringing contemporary African stories to international audiences, and his experience presenting The Fisherman at the 17th edition of Cinema Africa. The festival, held at Cineplex Bayreuth from January 25–28, showcases diverse African cinema and fosters cultural exchange through screenings and filmmaker discussions.

In this video, legendary Mozambican musician Stewart Sukuma sits down for an in-depth conversation with Prof. Dr. Ute Fendler, curator of the Cinema Africa film festival in Bayreuth, Germany. Their discussion, recorded on 23 January 2026, explores Sukuma’s artistic journey, the intersections of music and film, and his role in the festival’s program. Sukuma was part of the festival’s opening night celebration for “The Anchorage of Time” (Ancoradouro do Tempo), a Mozambican/Portuguese crime drama screened at the 17th Cinema Africa film festival held at Cineplex Bayreuth a few days later. The conversation offers rare personal insights into Sukuma’s creative process and his reflections on African cinema, culture, and global artistic exchange. For anyone interested a link to Stewart Sukuma's book is: https://www.poesiaimpossivel.com/o-alfaiate-e-a-arte-de-costurar-o-amor

Mauritian writer and photographer Umar Timol joined the Cluster of Excellence to observe and accompany the Cluster's acitivities and events in the month of May 2024. In this interview, he talks with Prof. Dr. Ute Fendler about his extensive body of work. ***** L'écrivain et photographe mauricien Umar Timol a rejoint le Pôle d'excellence pour observer et accompagner les activités et événements du Pôle au mois de mai 2024. Dans cette interview, il s'entretient avec le professeur Ute Fendler au sujet de son vaste corpus d'œuvres.

Dr. Pingdewindé Issiaka TIENDRÉBÉOGO is a lecturer and researcher in theatre studies at the Joseph KI-ZERBO University in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso. In May 2024 he was guest of the Africa Multiple Cluster of Excellence for an event with Umar Timol from Mauritius. In this interview he talks with Prof. Dr. Ute Fendler about theatre in Burkina Faso and his own work.

Dr. Ulf Vierke, director of Bayreuth's Iwalewahaus, talks about his project: "Of Art Worlds - Collecting and Archiving Modern and Contemporary Art on the African Continent" Find more information here: https://www.africamultiple.uni-bayreuth.de/en/Research/1research-sections/art_aestethics/Of-Art-Worlds/index.html

In June 2023 the Africa Multiple Cluster of Excellence presented a concert featuring the musician Alexandre Vieira from Brazil visiting Bayreuth for an artist fellowship and Mozambiquan musician Luka Mukhavele. Luka Mukhavele Luka Mukhavele is a music/Culture scholar, artist, instrument builder, and language teacher, from Mozambique. He engaged with music from early age, influenced by family members and community, which were very musical. Since buying toys for children was no a common practice, Luka and his friends taught themselves to build their own, and this included musical instruments. In 2005, Luka founded Mukhambira-musical, to research on the construction and performance of African musical. Adding to Mukhambira, Luka's PhD thesis “African Musical Instruments from a Contemporary Global Perspective —Mbira and Xizambi”, competed at Hochschule für Musik Franz Liszt Weimar, emerged as his artistic-academic approach to the reinvigoration African music and instruments and their integration in the global body of artistic and scientific knowledge in musicology, a discipline which he finds to have many ideological, conceptual, and paradigmatic detriments. Currently, Luka is the Editor/Designer of the course “Living Heritage in Africa: Music and the Performing Arts”, a freelancer consultant, artist, and lecturer. Both his artistic and his academic work are grounded on his “African Contemporary self-built instruments, from which he draws otherwise lost concepts and paradigms, aiming to address the shortfalls and inherent detriments of musicology in a global perspective. Alexandre Vieira Alexandre Vieira is a Brazilian musician based in Salvador - Bahia - Brasil. Master in music performance - Universidade Federal da Bahia (UFBA), plays upright bass, electric bass, guitar, percussion and sing, performing as a frontman and sideman. Born in a musical family, started playing in his early childhood with his father, sister and brother, became professional at 17 years old. Played and recorded alongside great artists from Brazil and abroad. His most recent and representative participations include the series of concerts Isso Ainda Dá Repercussão based on the work of the Brazilian composer Itamar Assumpção, the project Chulas na Feira at Santo Amaro da Purificação with Roberto Mendes, the recording of the album Fogueira Doce by MateusAleluia (Os Tincoãs), the recording of the album Afrodiaspórico by Luan Sodré Trio, the recording of the EP Grito by Manuela Rodrigues, collaborating as a musician for the Whale Whispering project by Michaela Harrison, and most recently the recording of the album Dança do Tempo by Ubiratan Marques and Asé Ensemble which will be fully released in 2023. Self-taught on most instruments, started playing upright bass at the university playing both classical and jazz, from where he aroused his interest to delve into Afrodiasporic arts, exploring the creative processes that involve oralities and corporeities connected with musical instruments.

On 30 October 2019, four musicians came together at the festive Margravial Opera House in Bayreuth to perform as part of the kick-off event of the Africa Multiple Cluster of Excellence. Tomas Childo, Tao Ravao, EunKyung Kim, Jae-Hyo Chang and Matchume Chango had rehearsed for only one week to present that spectacular and once in a lifetime concert.

Conference session including launch of documentary video Convenors: Valerie V. V. Gruber & Gilbert Shang Ndi Discussants: Dandara Maia Schellenberg & Hamissou Rhissa Achaffert In the backdrop of the historical uprooting and the forced deportation of Africans to the Americas, territoriality has become key in analysing practices of Afro-descendant resistance and (re-)existence in the Latin-American diaspora. It is in the re-making and re-imagining of (post)colonial territories that insurgent knowledges are produced, especially in contexts where the legacies of enslavement, marginalisation and invisibilisation are rife. Inspired by the ways in which young artists from Cartagena de Indias (Colombia) and Salvador da Bahia (Brazil) re-invent territoriality through artistic creativity, we developed a Participatory Action Research project that harnesses community mapping, self-writing and performance in an online and on-site exchange programme. In this panel conducted at the annual Cluster conference 2023 on Spatialities, Valerie Gruber and Gilbert Ndi Shang launch and discuss the documentary video "MemoriAmefricana – Cartagena de Indias/Salvador da Bahia" on this collective process realised in collaboration with the socio-cultural groups Candilé (Colombia) and REPROTAI (Brazil). In a self-reflexive mode that casts a critical glance at our transdisciplinary co-creation of knowledges, we focus on the challenges, shortcomings as well as opportunities of doing Participatory Action Research in actual and virtual spaces for more than three years. Thereby, we bring into dialogue the perspectives of two project coordinators and two discussants who followed the process with interest, though not actively involved. The team considers the participatory exploration of territories and territorialities as a pertinent heuristic prism in examining Afro-diasporic lifeworlds and the practical/symbolic attempts at memorialisation and collective becoming. Through creative media, youth and young adults re-map possibilities of existence that envision more inclusive spaces, using traces of African heritage as building blocks for individual and collective self-actualisation. This session is the outcome of research conducted within the Africa Multiple Cluster of Excellence at the University of Bayreuth, funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) under Germany's Excellence Strategy – EXC 2052/1 – 390713894. It was recorded during the International Conference "Reconfiguring African Studies through Spatialities" at the University of Bayreuth (Germany) on October 12, 2023.

With this collage the Africa Multiple Cluster of Excellence wants to pay tribute to one of its founding members, Prof. Dr. Ulrike Wanitzek who received the University Medal of the University of Bayreuth in November 2019. On behalf of all the members of the Africa Multiple Cluster of Excellence and everybody involved in African Studies at the University of Bayreuth: Congratulations, Professor Wanitzek! (C) Song by Matchume Zango for the Africa Multiple Cluster of Excellence

This Afro-Feminist Round Table will engage with decolonial feminism from francophone and anglophone African perspectives with a view to generating valuable insights in intersectional and decolonial epistemic frames pertinent to the Cluster’s agenda of reconfiguring African Studies. This intergenerational, transdisciplinary conversation has been is a sharing of thoughts and teachings from the speakers‘ diverse situated standpoints. Decolonial feminisms are epistemic frames to name and address all modes of systemic oppression. The conceptual tools implemented mobilize the knowledges produced by racialised women in the Global South throughout history, whereby transformative justice informs decolonial feminist visions. Knowledge production by racialised women has for the most part been about articulating life worlds and situated knowledges which have otherwise been consigned to the margins, dehumanised and/or erased. These knowledges form the bases of knowledge currently produced by Global South women scholars and activists working for much-needed transformative justice and life-affirming visions of futures. Moreover, decolonial feminism generate modes of care and hope as viable frams for envisioning African Futures for both established and early career scholars. Roundtable participants: Dr. Fatou Sow (sociologist and education scientist; Cheikh Anta Diop University, Dakar, Senegal and Centre National de Recherches Scientifique (CNRS) in Paris, France) Prof. Ousseina Alidou (African Literatures and Languages; Rutgers University, USA) Prof. Akosua Adomako Ampofo (sociologist, African and Gender Studies scholar; University of Legon, Accra, Ghana) Prof. Francoise Verges (political scientist and historian; Fondation Maison des sciences de l’homme, Paris, France) Chair: Dr. Christine Vogt-William, Director GDO, Africa Multiple Cluster of Excellence, University of Bayreuth The roundtable is designed as a pre-event for the award ceremony of the honorary doctorate for Dr. Fatou Sow later the same evening. It will be streamed online and may be attended via Zoom. ​ For more info please download the flyer. If you would like to join the event via zoom please register with africamultiple-gdo@uni-bayreuth.de

El Encuentro de las Tierras | The Confluence of Roots – a Video Production by Diego Araúja, Matchume Zango and Lobadys Pérez (English subtitles) El Encuentro de las Tierras (The Confluence of Roots) is about relations, a poetics of relation, to use the words of the Caribbean intellectual, Edouard Glissant. In particular, it is about the contact between artistic and subjective roots. Possibly, it also connotes a confluence of languages and memories for the production of a relation between Brazil, Colombia and Mozambique. It is in this sense that the artists Diego Araúja (Brazil), Matchume Zango (Mozambique) and Lobadys Pérez (Colombia) make use of music, sound, choreography, documentary, literature and oral lyric to come up with a Creole and artistic production in this audiovisual work. El Encuentro de las Tierras (O Encontro das Terras) é sobre relação, uma poética da relação, como aponta o intelectual caribenho Edouard Glissant. Especialmente, sobre o contato entre terras artísticas, subjetivas. Possivelmente uma confluência de linguagens e memórias para a produção da relação entre Brasil, Colômbia e Moçambique. É neste sentido que os artistas Diego Araúja (Brasil), Matchume Zango (Moçambique) e Lobadys Pérez (Colômbia) se valem da música, do som, da coreografia, do documental, da literatura e da lírica oral para uma produção crioula e artística neste trabalho audiovisual. El Encuentro de las Tierras es sobre la relación, una poética de la relación, como señala el intelectual caribeño Edouard Glissant. Especialmente, sobre el contacto entre tierras artísticas, subjetivas. Posiblemente una confluencia de lenguajes y memorias para la producción de la relación entre Brasil, Colombia y Mozambique. Es en este sentido que los artistas Diego Araúja (Brasil), Matchume Zango (Mozambique) y Lobadys Pérez (Colombia) hacen uso de la música, el sonido, la coreografía, el documental, la literatura y la lírica oral para una producción criolla y artística en esta obra audiovisual. Direction & creation: Diego Araúja, Matchume Zango & Lobadys Pérez Original soundtrack (Ya Duma Ma Africa): Matchume Zango Choreography: Lobadys Pérez Script & text of narration: Diego Araúja Narration: Laís Machado Sound (Ya Duma Ma Africa): Fanuel Macuacua Sound effects and mixing (narration): Andrea Martins Singer: Bela Zango Dancers: Frey Gonzales, Mónica Laguna, Gina Collazos & Ingrid Londoño Special participation: D. Maria Celeste de Araújo Directors of photography: Diego Araúja, Nin La Croix, Matchume Zango & Lobadys Pérez Cameras: Diego Araúja, Nin La Croix, Ercilio Muchanga & Manuel Meléndez “Chino Slim” Assembly, editing & subtitling: Rana Tosto English translation: Raquel de Souza Spanish translation: Valerie V. V. Gruber & Carolina Beleño Garcia Executive production: Valerie V. V. Gruber, Gilbert Shang Ndi & Ute Fendler Artwork commissioned by the Africa Multiple Cluster of Excellence at the University of Bayreuth (Germany).

Everlane Morais' Cinema (Brazil)

As part of the event series “Afrikaleidoscop meets ARTE,” the screening of the ARTE documentary "Sudan – Ein Krankenhaus im Schatten des Krieges" and subsequent discussion took place on October 29, 2025, at 7:00 pm CEST at Kulturhaus Neueinhalb. The evening brought together students, researchers, and members of the wider public for a shared viewing of ARTE’s powerful documentary on Sudan. Since April 2023, Sudan has been devastated by a violent civil war over control of Africa’s third-largest country. More than 25 million people are facing hunger, and around 12 million have been displaced. Hundreds of thousands have fled to the remote Nuba Mountains — a region lacking roads, mobile networks, and adequate medical care. The ARTE documentary follows surgeon Joseph Yacoub, who has run a hospital in the Nuba Mountains for nearly 30 years. As the only surgeon in the region, he treats hundreds of patients every day — from pregnant women and malnourished children to those wounded by the conflict. Together with his team, he works tirelessly to sustain medical care under extreme conditions while training young professionals who may one day carry his mission forward. Following the screening, filmmakers Laura Salm and Carl Gierstorfer joined the audience for a discussion about the making of the film, the challenges of reporting from a remote war zone, and the ethical responsibility of documentary storytelling in times of crisis. The exchange provided deeper insight into the humanitarian situation in Sudan and created space for questions and reflections from the audience. The event was recorded and is also available in ARTE’s media hub.

As part of its film series "AfriKaleidoskop meets ARTE" the Africa Multiple Cluster of Excellence showed the ARTE documentary Südafrikas Weg aus der Apartheid – Teil 1: Suche nach Antworten, on May 8, 2025 What does justice mean in post-apartheid South Africa—and who gets to define it? Watch the powerful discussion recorded after the screening of the ARTE documentary ,Kulturhaus Neuneinhalb. Filmmaker Thomas Blom and scholar Patricia Pinky Ndlovu-Gatsheni reflect on memory, reconciliation, and the unfinished struggle for equality.