Saved events

LAGOS: FESTAC 77 (15)

Project a Black Planet

,Cinema 1
Two people stand on the shore of a body of water.

A screening of mystical time-travelling epic Black Goddess, directed by Ola Balogun. 

Held in Lagos in 1977, FESTAC was the second edition of the First World Festival of Negro Arts and, at the time, the largest Pan-African gathering to ever take place. Shortly after the festival, Nigeria's first international co-productions were underway, led by pioneering director Ola Balogun in partnership with Brazil. 

Balogun’s connection to Brazil was deep-rooted; his great-grandfather, born enslaved in Brazil, bought his freedom and returned to the land of his ancestors with his two daughters, who were brought up by the returnee Aguda community in Lagos, echoing the return of a displaced diaspora that FESTAC helped bring about.

Balogun's resultant film, Black Goddess, is a mystical time-travelling epic of fracture, romance, reconciliation, and the preservation and marginalisation of indigenous and Afro-Brazilian spiritual practices.

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

Curated by Abiba Coulibaly.

Followed by a conversation with Ola Balogun via Zoom.

Please also note that this film contains depictions of slavery, use of racial slurs and sexual assault.

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

Film information
  • Release year   1978
  • Country of origin   Nigeria, Brazil
  • Director   Ola Balogun
  • Runtime   1hr 35mins

Pelumi Odubanjo is a curator, writer, and PhD researcher working between Glasgow and London. Her practice explores image-making across global diasporic geographies, past and present, with particular attention to representations of Blackness and the histories of photography. A James McCune Smith Scholar at the University of Glasgow, she is completing a PhD examining the production and endurance of historical vernacular images in Brazil and their afterlives in the work of contemporary Brazilian artists from the 1990s to the present. Her research considers how vernacular images produced in Brazil exceed fixed forms and singular authorship, acquiring meaning through circulation, repetition, and collective acts of remembrance across archives and artistic practice, while tracing their transnational afterlives beyond Brazil.

Recent curatorial projects include Beautiful Experiments (Photo50, London Art Fair, 2023) and Ten.8 afterimage (The New Art Gallery Walsall, 2026), developed as part of the Ten.8 Curatorial and Research Fellowship with the International Curators Forum. Her writing on photography, archives and contemporary art has been published in British Journal of Photography, FOAM Magazine, Magnum Photos, and Photoworks Annual, amongst other print and digital publications. She has also contributed to publications including Disintegrata (2024), a monograph on Silvia Rosi, and Cut Out: A Feminist History of Photo Collage, Montage and Assemblage (Victoria and Albert Museum, forthcoming 2026).

Pelumi has served as a selector for various photography awards, including Photo|Frome (2023, 2025) and Source Photography (2022), and is a board member of Listen Gallery, an artist-run non-profit sound arts and communal listening space in Glasgow.

Dr. Ola Balogun is a veteran Nigerian author, film maker and musician.

You might also like

Cinema 1

Location
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.   

Address
Barbican Centre
Silk Street, London
EC2Y 8DS

Public transport
The Barbican is widely accessible by bus, tube, train and by foot or bicycle. Plan your journey and find more route information in ‘Your Visit’ or book your car parking space in advance.