CinéMansA
Every month, CinéMansA offers a film program dedicated to African and Afro-diasporic cinema, including fiction, documentaries, classics, and contemporary creations.
From Africa to the Americas, via Europe, Asia, the Caribbean, and the Indian Ocean, CinéMansA explores the richness and diversity of African and Afro-diasporic cinema through an eclectic selection of films.
Through recent works and period classics—popular cinema, auteur films, socially engaged documentaries, and experimental creations—the program highlights a plurality of narratives, languages, and perspectives, while questioning dominant imaginaries.
Meetings and audiences
CinéMansA accompanies screenings with discussions and exchanges with filmmakers, researchers, critics, and artists on themes such as identity, heritage, social struggles, and popular culture.
The program is aimed at a diverse audience, through cultural outreach initiatives and tailored formats, and develops collaborations with partner venues in order to promote wider, traveling, and decentralized distribution.
Forms and formats
The events take various forms: indoor or outdoor screenings, film concerts combining films and musical performances, educational sessions for young audiences, as well as retrospectives and thematic focuses.
Programming
Inaugural cycle (November 2024 - June 2025): Spaces of Resistance and Marronnage
Based on the concept of marronnage, as conceived by Édouard Glissant and Sylvia Wynter, this first cycle explored spaces of struggle, emancipation, and invention through fiction, documentaries, and experimental films. Each session was designed as a collective moment of transmission and reflection.
Second cycle (October–December 2025): toward a pan-African film archive
Starting in October 2025, CinéMansA has commissioned Annabelle Aventurin to curate a film series dedicated to Pan-African cinema archives. Inspired by The Making of a Pan-African Cinema Archive by Onyeka Igwe, this program explores June Givanni’s collection, assembled over more than forty years, of films, posters, and catalogs from Africa, the Caribbean, and the diaspora.
Through screenings and discussions, the series invited audiences to (re)discover this cinematic heritage and the people—programmers, archivists, filmmakers—who are carrying on its legacy today.
Archivist and programmer Annabelle Aventurin works to preserve and distribute films. She has contributed to the conservation and circulation of Med Hondo's films, is currently working on Elsie Haas's filmography, and in 2022 made her first documentary essay, Le Roi n'est pas mon cousin(The King is not my cousin).
Third Cycle (March–July 2026): African Cinema Regions
From March to July, with one screening per month, CinéMansA presents a new film series based on the following premise: African cinema creates distinct territories—geographical, political, symbolic, and imaginary—shaped by the dialogue between generations of filmmakers.
From the liberated lands of Mortu Nega to the mountains of Lesotho in *This Is Not a Burial, It’s a Resurrection*, from the island of Fogo in *Hanami* to the legendary Dakar of *Touki Bouki*, the spaces captured on film become territories marked by struggle, resistance, memory, and nostalgia. These places are not mere backdrops: they shape the bodies, life paths, and subjectivities that inhabit them.
By bringing together restored classic films and contemporary works, this series invites viewers to move freely between these cinematic worlds and, over the course of the screenings, explore the imaginations they inspire.
A series conceived by Léa Baron, curator, programmer, and cultural organizer.
2. Raoul Peck presents Ernest Cole, Photographer in preview at Montreuil, December 8, 2024. © Nicolas Morin for MansA
3. Yure Romao and his band for the film concert Orfeu Negro, February 13, 2025, at 360. © MansA
