AN OPERA OF THE WORLD

​On Wed 27 March 2019, Manthia Diawara screened his film "An Opera of the World" at the Scribe Video Center at 7:00PM. Diawara's film is based on the African opera Bintou Were, a Sahel Opera, which recounts an eternal migration drama. The Bintou Were opera, filmed on location in Bamako, Mali in 2007, serves as a mirror for Diawara to build an aesthetic and reflexive story, through song and dance, about the current and yet timeless drama of migration and the ongoing refugee crises. The success and limits of fusing African and European perspectives are tested by interlacing performances from the Bintou Were opera, past and present archival footage of migrations, classic European arias, and interviews with European and African intellectuals, artists and social activists.