2025/02/19 by Rachel Johnson · 1 voice
Economics, Econometrics and Finance · Social Sciences · Arts and Humanities · #Cinema and Media Studies #Cultural Industries and Urban Development #South Asian Cinema and Culture
paper · pdf · doi:10.33178/alpha.28.01
openalex publication_date 2025/02/19 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/02
Amidst calls from Decolonise and Black Lives Matter movements, several film festivals are engaged in the beginnings of a “reorientation,” a shift in their understandings of, and relationships to, colonial power structures. Considering decoloniality as a plural process rather than a singular endpoint, this article examines a recent example of such reorientation: Women Creators of the Future is a programme of films made by women of African heritage, co-curated by Festival Films Femmes Afrique (Senegal) and Leeds International Film Festival (UK). Taking its inspiration from a previous Films Femmes Afrique programme of the same name, this initiative constitutes a meeting of festival “worlds” that tells us much about burgeoning processes of decolonisation in cultural organisations. Combining fieldwork with interviews and self-reflexive analysis, I trace the complex relationships between curation, funding, placemaking and labour that underpinned the collaboration. I argue that this meeting of two contrasting festivals illuminates emerging practices of decolonising through co-curation, yet also invites us to reflect on the need for practices that more fully address both epistemic and economic injustice.