News

“Africa to the world” has been a popular rallying cry from the continent and its diaspora as the global appetite for its culture has grown rapidly. Many hope to further extend its reach. Yet, as African artisans connect and build upon one another’s successes, they’ve come to center themselves. “Made in Africa” is a monthly column by “Rolling Stone” staff writer Mankaprr Conteh that celebrates and interrogates the lives, concerns, and innovations of African musicians from their vantage point.

In their latest projects, Oscar-winning actor Lupita Nyong’o and...

This festival season brought with it a pair of ambitious adaptations of scholarly texts. In Venice, Ava DuVernay premiered Origin, a narrative take on Isabel Wilkerson’s tome, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents. The Selma director anchored her adaptation in a tender love story, using Wilkerson’s personal life to understand the intellectual and emotional labor supporting the book’s framework. And at the Toronto International Film Festival, Roger Ross Williams debuted his own film translation of an influential text on race.

In Stamped From the Beginning, Williams uses Ibram X. Kendi’s book of the same name to recast the narrators of Black history. The documentary, which will premiere on Netflix in November, convenes contemporary Black women scholars and organizers to synthesize and contextualize Kendi’s central thesis. The author makes the briefest appearances throughout the film, attesting to Williams’ mission to center Black women.

There’s a...

Sheffield DocFest is spotlighting and celebrating Black British screen culture this month with a Retrospective titled “Films belong to those who need them – fragments from the history of Black British Cinema.” The Retrospective brings together a wide and diverse range of films that have been largely overlooked and undervalued in film history and criticism.

To give breadth to the selection, the films have been selected by guest curators. They are film exhibition company We Are Parable’s Anthony Andrews and Teanne Andrews; writer and director Campbell X; British-Nigerian historian, broadcaster and filmmaker David Olusoga; filmmaker George Amponsah; filmmaker Judah Attille; curator and cultural historian Mark Sealy; and a group of film studies/screenwriting and film students from Sheffield Hallam University as part of a partnership project led by principal lecturer in film studies Chi-Yun Shin.

For example, the We Are Parable program – titled “Remember / Re-evaluate / Review” – examines the portrayal of...

The Sheffield DocFest has unveiled its line-up for its 2021 programme that includes the World Premiere of the first instalment of Academy Award winner Steve McQueen’s new series for the BBC, ‘Uprising’.

For the first time, Sheffield DocFest goes nationwide with five premiere screenings showing in up to 16 partner cinemas in cities around the UK, and online, followed by pre-recorded Q&As. It also includes the previously announced Retrospective: Films belong to those who need them – fragments from the history of Black British Cinema.

The celebration of Black British screen culture – curated by guest curators including David Olusoga. Films of all lengths will all be presented as part of the retrospective including titles such as ‘Burning An Illusion’ by Menelik Shabazz, ‘It Ain’t Half Racist’, ‘Mum’ by Stuart Hall, ‘Looking for Langston’ by Isaac Julien, ‘Second Coming’ by Debbie Tucker Green, ‘The Black Safari’ by Colin Luke, ‘Baby Mother...

The festival will take place in Sheffield, across the UK, and online.

The programme for the 28th edition of Sheffield Doc/Fest includes the world premiere of the first episode of Uprising, a three-part documentary series from UK filmmakers Steve McQueen and James Rogan.

Doc/Fest 2021 will play 55 world premieres and 22 international premieres, for the event running in Sheffield, across the UK and online from June 4-13.

Scroll down for the Competition titles

First announced last week and playing at the festival as a Special Screening, Uprising will examine three events from 1981 - in January, the New Cross Fire which killed 13 black teenagers; in March,...

Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.NEWSAbove: Madeleine Lim's Sambal Belacan (1997)After two decades of censorship by the Singapore government, Madeleine Lim's 1997 film Sambal Belacan will be screened in Singapore. The film, "a personal, intertextual, and poetic document about three Southeast Asian lesbians who discuss the social and political climate of Singapore," has previously only been shown in underground viewings. Meanwhile, The Meg 2 has found its director: Ben Wheatley, whose adaptation of Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca recently debuted on Netflix. Recommended VIEWINGThe official trailer for Carlo Mirabella-Davis's thriller Swallow, which follows a pregnant housewife's stomach-churning struggle for bodily autonomy. This Halloween, watch the film on Mubi. Béla Tarr's 1988 film Damnation has been restored in 4K from the original 35mm camera negative by the Hungarian National Film Institute. Co-written by frequent collaborator László Krasznahorkai, the film...