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Artist and filmmaker Zina Saro-Wiwa, whose work challenges conventional views of Africa, will speak and screen a documentary at 7 p.m. Sept. 20 at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Artist and filmmaker Zina Saro-Wiwa, whose work challenges conventional views of Africa, will speak and screen a documentary at 7 p.m. Sept. 20 at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Saro-Wiwa’s talk will be this fall’s African Diaspora Lecture presented by UNC’s Sonja Haynes Stone Center for Black Culture and History. Discussion will follow the free public program, to be held at the center at 150 South Road.

An experimental and conceptual artist, Saro-Wiwa was born in Nigeria and brought up in the U.K. She worked at the BBC for much of her career. Based in New York, Saro-Wiwa also spends time in London and Lagos. She founded AfricaLab, a production company dedicated to re-imagining Africa through visual media, principally film and art. 

The documentary, Saro-Wiwa’s “This Is My Africa,” features Colin Firth (2011 Academy Award, “The King’s Speech”), Chiwetel Ejiofor (2008 Laurence Olivier Award for Best Actor, “Othello”) and others. It uses memories and perceptions of 21 Africans and Africaphiles to create a meditation on meanings people attach to the continent.

“This Is My Africa” premiered on HBO last year. The first major film from AfricaLab, it has won awards including best short documentary at the International Black Docufest in Atlanta. It was an official selection of the New York African Film Festival and the Africa Film Festival in Belgium and has been shown in festivals, galleries and museums across the U.K., Europe, United States and Africa. 

The screening and discussion also are part of the Stone Center’s ongoing Diaspora Festival of Black and Independent Film. For more information on the film, visit: www.thisismyafrica.com.
For more on the Stone Center, visit: http://sonjahaynesstonectr.unc.edu.

Stone Center contact: Clarissa Goodlett, (919) 962-0395, cgoodlet@email.unc.edu
News Services contact: LJ Toler, (919) 962-8589

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