African Film Festivals and Transnational Flows of Living Cultural Heritage

“Sure to become a key reference for anyone working on African film festivals, this volume offers a refreshingly pluri-centric perspective on the ways African stories travel across many continents and communities that constitute today's African film worlds.” — Dr. Rachel Johnson, University of Leeds, United Kingdom “This volume is an essential festival knowledge forum. Through a diverse set of case studies, the book offers highly engaging Indigenous, postcolonial, and diasporic perspectives, emphasizing the social impact, cultural exchange, and meaningful collaboration of and through Africa-themed film festivals.” — Prof. Dr. Skadi Loist, Film University Babelsberg KONRAD WOLF, Germany “This edited collection brings together a wide range of scholars and critics and provides a nuanced overview of the role played by international film festivals in shaping our understanding of African cinemas across the globe and the circuits through which African films circulate. A much-needed intervention in festival studies.” — Dr. Antoine Damiens, York University, Canada This open access book investigates how flows of knowledge that arise from the African continent travel and are transformed through new contexts of presentation and engagement in new locations. Through case studies on Africa-themed film festivals in Africa, Europe and the Americas, the book explores potential methods of catalyzing a “transnational flow” from inception to end that involves attention to process, rather than studying festivals as static cultural products with discrete and isolated categories of programming, presentation, documentation, and networking. The chapters probe how festivals interact with place and location and create journeys of discovery in translating and contextualizing films for specific populations and audiences. The book also focuses on how dialogue is created in a festival-knowledge forum that respects the living nature of cultural heritage as it is received from its original context, presented during film festivals, and passed on to future generations for safeguarding. Sheila Petty is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and Professor Emerita of Film Studies at the University of Regina, Canada. She has written extensively on cultural heritage in sub-Saharan African, North African and Amazigh cinemas. Her most recent book is Habiba Djahnine: Memory Bearer (2025).