- A Lost African Diaspora (2019). 12 minutes.
- Creole Cultures in the Indian Ocean (2018). 20 minutes.
- Voices of Afro-Sri Lankans (2014). 70 minutes.
- Indian Ocean Memories: African Migrations (2014). 40 minutes.
Film Screening: Wednesday 20 November 2024 from 7.30 pm St John’s College (University of Oxford)
BLACK HISTORY MONTH FILM SCREENING – ‘Indian Ocean Memories: African Migrations’
- Indian Ocean Memories and African Migrations”: Film Screening & a Discussion: by Prof. Shihan de Silva Jayasuriya (University of London).
- https://vpa.ac.lk/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/Film-Screening-notice.pdf
The narration is in English and the singing is in Sri Lanka Portuguese with interviews in Sinhala. English subtitles are provided throughout the film.
Neil van der Linden facebook posting on film screening at Leiden (Netherlands): (25 September 2019)
https://www.facebook.com/neil.vanderlinden/posts/3093608057348304
Film screening: Afro-Diasporic Voices – Lest We Forget
Elphinstone Institute Ethnographic Film Series – Tuesday 7 February 2017
Indian Ocean Memories: African Migrations
Her ethnographic films were screened in Austria (University of Vienna), United Kingdom(Elphinstone Institute, University of Aberdeen, University of Cambridge, University of Oxford, Institute of Commonwealth Studies, Royal Holloway, School of Oriental and African Studies, Mozambique High Commission) University of Essex), Germany (Zentrum Moderner Oriente, Berlin and Goethe University, Frankfurt), Japan (Universities of Kansai and Kobe), Spain (Autonomous University of Barcelona), Seychelles (Ministry of Culture), Sri Lanka (University of Colombo, International Centre for Ethnic Studies, Centre for Poverty Analysis, Social Scientists Association, University of Kelaniya, University of the Visual Arts & Perforances), Switzerland (European Conference on African Studies, University of Basel) and The Netherlands (International Institute of Social History, Amsterdam, African Studies Institute and the Leiden Centre for Indian Ocean Studies, University of Leiden).
This ethnographic film brings to the fore a lesser known easterly migration of Africans, much older than the better known transatlantic migration. Voluntary and involuntary movement of Africans have been concurrent phenomena but our current episteme is based on the scanty archival records available. On the other hand, scattered Afrodescent communities in the Indian Ocean region remind us of the forgotten African diasporas. The film concentrates on a community in the northwestern province of Sri Lanka, who say that their only heritage is encompassed in a cultural production called manja, chant-like singing in a creolised Portuguese which the community call “our language”. The layered colonial histories of Sri Lanka emerge as the community’s dual heritage – African and Portuguese – surface through the vibrant remembered rhythms and embodied memories of an ancestral tradition entangled in the dynamics of migration and indigenisation.