A journey through the archive of BAFTA award-winning curator and film programmer, June Givanni. This private collection made public contains thousands of films from across Africa, the Caribbean and the diaspora amassed in a career spanning more than forty years. Using oral history interviews and ephemera from four film festivals as her touchstones, author Onyeka Igwe offers a way to encounter Pan-African film through the archive.
The book starts with Third Eye, the film festival that propelled June into a career in Pan-African cinema. Through connections she made there, she travelled to FESPACO in 1985. Participating in the festival while Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso was under the leadership of revolutionary Thomas Sankara was a formative experience. In Ouagadougou she connected with film programmers Suzy Landau and Claire Andrade Watkins, who would take steps to organise Images Caraïbes, Fort de France, Martinique, 1988, and Celebration of Black Cinema, Boston, US.
Using original oral history research with June and other key figures in Pan-African and Black British cinema, Onyeka uncovers the important role that women festival organisers, programmers and cultural workers have played in Pan-African cinema history. She conceptualises June Givanni’s Pan-African Cinema Archive (JGPACA) as a feminist counter archive that foregrounds marginalised histories and proposes a radical approach to archiving itself. In tracing and naming the cinematic legacies that ground political filmmaking practices today, she preserves June’s work, knowledge and fervour for Pan African cinema for future generations.
Introduction
Chapter One: Third Eye: London Third World Cinema Festival
Chapter Two: The Pan-African Film and Television Festival of Ouagadougou
Chapter Three: Images Caraïbes
Chapter Four: Celebration of Black Cinema
Conclusion
‘This treasure trove of a book is an extraordinary deep dive illuminating June Givanni’s unwavering dedication to gathering an essential archive of the cinema of Pan-African filmmakers. Igwe takes us on a journey with immense respect for Givanni and other key figures in 1980s Britain who helped constitute a living, breathing archive. Igwe’s curiosity and delight is infectious.’
– Pratibha Parmar, Writer & Filmmaker
‘In June Givanni: The Making of a Pan-African Cinema Archive, Onyeka Igwe sets herself the task of “raging against the erasure of context that traditional archives perpetuate”. She succeeds brilliantly; not just with rage, but with compassion, insight, wit, and palpable love for June Givanni, the unique and inspirational figure at the heart of this book.
Drawing upon keen research and her own personal experience, Igwe skilfully animates past Pan-African film gatherings while tracing their social and political contours. In doing so, she provides a welcome reminder for those of us searching for answers to difficult questions in today’s world that so many conversations – around blackness, identity, solidarity, transnational and cross-ethnic collaboration, the utility of cinema and more – have already happened. Igwe’s book is the embodiment of looking back in order to move forward, and an absolutely delightful read.’
– Ashley Clark, author of Facing Blackness: Media and Minstrelsy in Spike Lee’s Bamboozled
June Givanni: The Making of a Pan-African Cinema Archive by Onyeka Igwe is a pathbreaking book on the international visibility of African and African Diaspora cinemas. The author successfully shows, not only the role of black women filmmakers and festival organizers, but also the pioneering and pan-Africanist labor of June Givanni, connecting the people and the films from London to Boston, Fort-de-France (Martinique) and Ouagadougou. It’s inspiring and nostalgic at the same time.
– Manthia Diawara, director AI: African Intelligence, NYU
Onyeka Igwe has written a fitting tribute to the vitally important archival work of June Givanni. This book illuminates and provides due recognition of the invaluable contributions Givanni has made to the study and preservation of African and Afro-diasporic cinema. Through a combination of anecdotes and research, readers will gain a critical understanding of the cultural, historical and political context and raison d’etre of the indispensable June Givanni Pan-African Cinema Archive.
– Amy Sall, author of The African Gaze: Photography, Cinema and PowerÂ
