Manthia Diawara

Malian filmmaker and New York University professor, Manthia Diawara critiques visual anthropology through the work of Jean Rouch.

In An Opera of the World, Malian scholar and filmmaker Manthia Diawara reflects upon the refugee crisis and the relationship between Europe and Africa. The film revolves around a 2008 performance of Bintou Were, a Sahel Opera, by Zé Manel Fortes with a libretto by Koulsy Lamko, in Bamako, around which Diawara builds a story about migration, interweaving interviews with documentary and archival footage. In the course of the film, one crosses into the world of opera from the tradition of sung wisdoms and sentiments, which has characterized West African culture for centuries. If opera is often understood as an über-European art form—the Gesamtkunstwerk invoked by Richard Wagner—Diawara chooses to meditate on its movement or migration as opposed to its expansion or totality. What happens when opera moves south, from Europe to Africa, just as so many people from that continent are moving north, in search of better lives?

In Senegal, Yene was traditionally a seaside town with many fishermen and farmers but has in recent years been troubled by coastal erosion and urbanisation. In conversation with the town’s community, Manthia Diawara explores how their lives contribute to the undermining of their shared environment.

It showcases the contact zones between African rituals of possession within traditional fishing villages and the emergence of new technological frontiers known as Artificial Intelligence.