Public Programs

Ugochukwu-Smooth C. Nzewi and Ntone Edjabe will discuss the recent publication of FESTAC ’77, an innovative book and mixtape which is the product of years of research helmed by Chimurenga—a magazine based in Cape Town, South Africa, and one of the most important cultural journals on the continent—in collaboration with Afterall, the London-based journal. Listen to the FESTAC '77 mixtape here.

Afronauts, a 2014 short film by Ghanaian-born filmmaker Nuotama Frances Bodomo, follows a team of astronauts as they train for a mission to the moon. This video was inspired by the Zambian space program in the 1960s and follows then-17-year-old astronaut Matha Mwamba, the woman at the center of this historic mission. Led by schoolteacher and revolutionary Edward Mukuka Nkoloso, Zambia’s National Academy of Science, Space Research and Philosophy began as an unofficial program with aspirations to beat the Soviet Union and the United States to the moon.