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DAKAR: The First World Festival of Negro Arts 1966 (15*)

Project a Black Planet

,Cinema 1
On a street, people stand beside a shop selling bright, beautiful flowers.

The First World Festival of Negro Arts brought together artists on an unprecedented scale under the banner of Black culture, shaping this programme's focus on diasporic return and estrangement.

Documentarian William Greaves captured the festival in official footage, interwoven with poetry by W E B Du Bois and reflections of awe and distance. The film features Haile Selassie, Alvin Ailey, Aimé Césaire and more, while acknowledging the '3,000 miles and 400 years' of separation the festival sought to bridge.

Shot the following decade, Reou-Takh was the first Senegalese film to be banned in its country and the first by an African director to depict chattel slavery. It follows an African American man – speaking with a curious French accent – arriving in Dakar. His search for authenticity proves elusive, unfolding through encounters that reflect shifting forms of cultural alienation. From Dakar's dance halls to the 'Door of No Return' on Île de Gorée, the film traces a journey marked by irony, disillusionment and uneasy self-reckoning.

Tagged with: Cinema Ambiguous Encounters Project a Black Planet Film Season

Followed by a conversation between Amandine Nana and Morad Montazami.

Curated by Abiba Coulibaly.

Please note, this film contains depictions of sexual violence within the context of enslavement. 

Book two or more films in the Project a Black Planet film programme at the same time and get 20% off.

Amandine Nana is an author, curator, art historian and urban planner specialized in African and diasporic studies. Trained in Paris, Dakar and New York at the École Normale Supérieure, Sciences Po, Cheikh Anta Diop University and Columbia University, she is the founder of Transplantation, a socio-cultural organization and traveling library dedicated to spreading and preserving diasporic creativity.

 

Morad Montazami is an art historian, publisher and curator whose work focuses on global modernisms and postcolonial art histories. Following his role as ‘Middle East and North Africa’ curator at Tate Modern, London, from 2014 to 2019, he founded Zamân Books & Curating, an editorial and curatorial platform dedicated to the study of Arab, African and Asian modernities. He is the artistic director of the 2026 Dakar Biennale.

Film Programme

The First World Festival of Negro Arts, William Greaves, USA, 1968

Reou-Takh, Mahama Johnson Traoré, Senegal, 1972

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Cinema 1

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Barbican Cinema 1 is located within the main Barbican building on Level -2. Head to Level G and walk towards the Lakeside Terrace where you’ll find stairs and lifts to take you down to the venue floor.   

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