Synopsis : Manthia Diawara’s latest essay film, AI: African Intelligence, explores the contact zones between African rituals of possession among traditional fishing villages of the Atlantic coast of Senegal and the emergence of new technology frontiers known as Artificial Intelligence. Considering the confluence of tradition and modernity, Diawara questions how we could move from disembodied machines towards a more humane and spiritual control of algorithms. Could Africa be the context of emergence of such improbable algorithms?
Festival History : Berlinale, 2023
Director :
Manthia Diawara
Producer :
Jürgen Bock
Screenplay :
Manthia Diawara
DOP :
James Newitt
Editor :
Mohamed Al Mubarak
Cast :
Mère-Bi (Marymata Seck), Diyé Dia, Raoul Frese, Makhou Lebougui, Jean-Paul Colleyn, Hadja Dramé, Marieme Seck, Oulimata Ndoye, Awa Diop, Mamadou Diouf
A native of Mali, Professor Diawara received his education in France. He is the author of We Won't Budge: An African Exile in the World (Basic Civitas Books, 2003), Black-American Cinema: Aesthetics and Spectatorship (ed. Routledge, 1993), African Cinema: Politics and Culture (Indiana University Press, 1992), and In Search of Africa (Harvard University Press, 1998). Professor Diawara also collaborated with Ngûgî wa Thiong’o in making the documentary Sembene Ousmane: The Making of the African Cinema, and directed the German-produced documentary Rouch in Reverse.