Join us at as we begin Diversity Education Week with a look at American justice and reconsideration of this historic voyage. The program will analyze the impact of Columbus on the “new world” outlook from various cultural contexts. Program participants will review evidence, hear testimonies, and experience legal arguments for the prosecution and defense of Columbus’ actions in the “discovery” of America.

The Eleventh Annual African Diaspora Film Festival
Journeys of Discovery: Love, War and Politics

The films are as follows:

On Monday, Oct. 1, 2012 at 7:00 PM the festival opens with Apocalypse Africa Made in America, this seventy –two minute documentary film looks at the continent after World War II, when new leadership and democratic governments seemed to place much of Africa on a path to prosperity and development. Since that initial prosperity boom, twenty million Africans have died of disease, starvation and war. The film produced and directed by Washington DC based filmmaker and journalist Del Walters, suggests that, after record growth in the 1950s, a series of internationally orchestrated local conflicts have kept Africa where the US and other developed world nations and corporations can continue to exercise economic and political control.

Monday, Oct. 8, 2012 at 7:00PM Sleepwalking Land (Terra Sonâmbula )
Set during the Mozambiquen Civil War, this feature film focuses on Muidinga, a fragile boy, whose only wish is to find his family. On his quest to find family and home, his only assistance comes in the form of a storyteller and a dead man’s diary. This is a beautiful story of love and triumph in a time of war. [Portuguese with English subtitles]. Dir.: Teresa Prata

Monday, Oct. 22, 2012 at 7PM. Night Catches Us is directed by Tanya Washington and stars Kerry Washington and Anthony Mackie. In 1976, after years of mysterious absence, Marcus (Mackie) returns to the Philadelphia neighborhood where he came of age in the midst of the Black Power movement. While his arrival raises suspicion among his family and former neighbors, he finds acceptance from his old friend Patricia (Washington) and her daughter. However, Marcus quickly finds himself at odds with the organization he once embraced, whose members suspect he orchestrated the slaying of their former comrade-in-arms. In a startling sequence of events, Marcus must protect a secret that could shatter everyone’s beliefs.

On Monday, Oct. 29, 2012 at 7:00PM Mama C: Urban Warrior in the African Bush directed by Joanne Hersfield will screen. The documentary explores Charlotte O’Neal, Mama C’s decade’s long project of coming to terms with who she is—an African American raised in Kansas City, KS. In 1971 she joined the Eldridge Cleaver faction of Black Panther Party in exile and later moved to Tanzania. As she writes in one of her published poems, “In my freshly-landed, just-got-off-the-boat enthusiasm of living in Africa, I tried to blend, to melt, homogenize, disappear, erase, the essence of what made me who I am, an African, who grew up in and was molded by the ‘hoods’ of America, and I almost lost myself, self.”

Monday November 5, 2012 at 7:00PM An African Election. The 2008 presidential election in Ghana, West Africa, serves as a backdrop for this feature documentary that looks behind-the-scenes at the complex, political machinery of a developing world democracy struggling to legitimize itself to its developed world contemporaries. At stake in the race are the fates of two political parties that will do almost anything to win.

The African Diaspora Film Festival is free and open to the public. Campus Cinema is located in the A.M. Witherspoon Student Center at 2810 Cates Avenue on the NC State University campus. Discussions led by various Africana Studies faculty will follow each screening.

About Africana Studies
The Africana Studies Program, housed in the Office of Interdisciplinary Studies in the College of Humani¬ties and Social Sciences at NC State University, offers students the opportunity to study the Black experi¬ence throughout the African Diaspora. Students explore topics, issues and research from cross-cultural, international, transnational and multidisciplinary perspectives.

The Tenth Annual Africana Studies Program African Diaspora Film Festival curated to explore the complexity of hip hop music, its culture and its relationship to the academy will be held April 2–23, 2012 in Poe Hall Auditorium (216).

Bling the final film of the festival will screen on Monday April 23, from 7:00 PM-9:30 PM. In this film hip hop celebrities travel to war-torn Sierra Lione, West Africa and come face to face with the victims of the blood diamond industry so deeply entwined in hip hop. The filmmakers explore the cultural significance of diamond jewelry in hip hop and trace its evolution from the early 1980s old- school culture to the bling-encrusted billion dollar industry it is today.
Following Bling, the festival will culminate with a panel discussion about hip hop culture, its place in the academy, and both its positive and negative impact. Moderated by Emmy Award winning filmmaker Dante James, Assistant Director of the African American Cultural Center, the featured panelists are hip hop artist and Director of the Community for Diversity in the College of Natural Resources Thomas Easley, multi-talented performance artist Sandra Dubose and Rev. Carl Kinney, novelist, award winning journalist, and cultural critic.

The African Diaspora Film Festival is free and open to the public. Campus Cinema is located in the A.M. Witherspoon Student Center at 2810 Cates Avenue on the NC State University campus.

On Monday, April 2, 2012 from 7:00 PM –9:30 PM the festival opens with the classic film Juice starring the late Tupac Shakur. Gerard Brown, the screenwriter of Juice will share his professional and prersonal insights and respond to questions about the film and the role of hip hop culture in American society. The screening will include commentary by Dr. Sheila Smith McKoy, Director of the Africana Studies Program and the African American Cultural Center.

On Tuesday April 10, 2012 from 7:00 PM-9:30PM the festival will offer Hip Hop: Beyond Beats and Rhymes. This one hour documentary originally aired on PBS. It examines issues of masculinity, sexism, violence and homophobia in hip-hop culture.

On Monday April 16, from 7:00 PM-10:15 PM the critically acclaimed film Sarabah will screen. This film from Senegal with English subtitles features rapper, singer and activist Sister Fa who uses her music and persuasive powers to end the practice of female genital cutting. Say My Name will also screen on April 16. In this film female lyricists speak candidly about class, race and gender and pursuing their passions in an industry dominated by men and noted for misogyny.

About Africana Studies
The Africana Studies Program, housed in the Office of Interdisciplinary Studies in the College of Humanities and Social Sciences at NC State University, offers students the opportunity to study the Black experience in Africa, the Americas, and throughout the African Diaspora. Students explore topics, issues and research from cross-cultural, international, transnational and multidisciplinary perspectives.

AACC Director Dr. Sheila Smith McKoy has been profiled in this year’s edition of the Agromeck. In this very insightful interview Smith McKoy discusses her upbringing in a segregated Raleigh, NC, her love of literature, her vision for the African American Cultural Center and why cultural education about race can lead to a better America.

AACC Director Featured in 2012 Agromeck

Use plus and minus to zoom. Best viewed in fullscreen.
Courtesy N.C. State Student Media, as printed in the 2012 Agromeck.

In this program, we look back at a great year of events and programs.

Bliss by Yuko Nogami Taylor

The exhibit “Majesty Incognito: East Meets West” by Raleigh artist Yuko Nogami Taylor will be featured in the AACC Gallery from August 1, 2012 to August 31, 2012. Taylor spent much of her adult life in North Carolina working as an account executive and has been working as a professional artist for almost a decade. Taylor grew up in Tokyo and attended an exclusive private school which the Japanese Royal family historically attended. She is married to Thomas Taylor, an African American jazz musician. In her work Taylor merges her two worlds, creating soulful portraits of enslaved African Americans in the antebellum South using traditional Japanese painting techniques.

Yuko Nogami Taylor
Based on historical photographs of 19th Century African American men, women and children Taylor’s subjects are rendered against idyllic dreamlike backgrounds created by drips of oil paintings often etched with stylized flowers or birds; traditional Japanese styles, images and characters. As Taylor states, “I became fascinated with the African American experience, culture and history. Through my personal experiences with those whom I consider the builders of this country, I fell in love with the rare old photos of nameless people. They were slaves or their descendants. I contemplated the strength of their lives and searched for an answer to some questions why am I here and what is the purpose of my given life? Giving color to the past and putting life back into those lives encourages me to paint.”
The exhibit will include fifteen to twenty oil paintings and will open on August 1st from 6:00pm to 8:00pm. Taylor will be available to greet visitors and answer questions. The Thomas Taylor jazz trio will perform.
The exhibit is free and open to the public. The African American Cultural Center is located in the A.M. Witherspoon Student Center at 2810 Cates Avenue. For tours please call (919)515-5210.
A reception for the artist, which will also feature the Thomas Taylor Trio, is scheduled for August 22, 2012 from 5:30pm to 7:00pm, during the annual AACC Harambee celebration.
For more information visit the artists official website: www.yukotaylor.com

The African American Cultural Center’s Living Legends series documents the lives of North Carolina’s pioneers. In this inaugural edition AACC Director Dr. Sheila Smith McKoy speaks with Herman Ferguson, over 90 years young, and his wife Iyaluua Ferguson. Mr. Ferguson was a dedicated colleague of Malcolm X. His book An Unlikely Warrior: The Evolution of a Revolutionary chronicles his journey from growing up in North Carolina to becoming a founding member of Malcolm X’s Organization of Afro-American Unity (OAAU) to being an eyewitness to his leader’s assassination in Harlem’s Audubon Ballroom in 1965.