Southern African Transnational Cinema

This project will document archives related to the Southern African Transnational Cinema Movement from 1977 to 2006, which recorded the time of intense change leading to the end of apartheid and majority rule in Southern Africa. Collections will be researched in Mozambique, Tanzania, and Zimbabwe with others in Namibia South Africa and Swaziland referenced. The material includes feature films, documentaries, posters of films and film festivals, festival manifestoes, correspondence, reports and newspaper articles. This movement, which laid the basis for Southern African postcolonial cinema, has not yet been properly documented as a coherent history, and the important transitions in the decolonization of Southern Africa are being forgotten. It is important to revive these concepts at a time of increasing nationalism and xenophobia in Southern Africa and, indeed, globally. Digitization will enable sharing the archive across Southern Africa and globally, potentially inspiring screenings, discussions, research, and publishings of the archive by filmmakers, academics and the public.