About this Event
Join us on Thursday 5 November for a panel discussion with filmmaker Mati Diop, historian and curator Dr Eva Namusoke, and novelist Dr Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi, chaired by film scholar Dr Nobunye Levin.
This talk is the second of a symposium of three panel discussions programmed around the new Chisenhale Gallery commission, Kibuuka Omumbaale by Wakaliga Uganda. The symposium explores Wakaliga Uganda’s reappropriation and subversion of the figure of the superhero and other film genre conventions as a means of engaging with the cultural residues of global power struggles.
The second panel explores how ancestral spirits are received, understood and reimagined within contemporary culture, taking the complex return of spiritual figures such as Kibuuka Omumbaale as its starting point. Bringing together perspectives on heritage, spirituality and restitution, the discussion considers what it means for objects and cultural figures displaced by colonialism to return, and how their reception is changed by the contemporary context.
Please Note
This is a free event with limited capacity, please only book a ticket if you’re able to attend. If your plans change, please cancel your ticket as soon as possible so that we can offer the place to others.
Seating is limited and available on a first-come, first-served basis. If you arrive more than 15 minutes after the event begins, Chisenhale Gallery reserves the right to refuse entry.
Biographies
Mati Diop is a French-Senegalese filmmaker born in Paris in 1982. Since the early 2000s, she has forged her own cinematic language. With her debut feature Atlantics (2019), winner of the Grand Prix at the Cannes Film Festival, followed by Dahomey (2024), awarded the Golden Bear at the Berlin International Film Festival (both shortlisted for the Academy Awards), she has established one of the most distinctive bodies of work in contemporary cinema.
Dr Eva Namusoke is Senior Curator, African Collections Futures, working across collections from and about the African continent in the University of Cambridge’s museums, botanic garden and libraries. Eva is developing new research and an exhibition around the June 2024 renewable loan from the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology at Cambridge to the Uganda Museum of 33 Ugandan artefacts and the sacred ancestral remains of six people.
Dr Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi is a Ugandan-British novelist and short story writer known for weaving Ganda oral traditions and history into modern fiction. Her doctoral novel, The Kintu Saga, won the Kwani? Manuscript Project in 2013. Her short story collection, Manchester Happened, was published in 2019. Makumbi was also awarded a Windham-Campbell Prize in 2019, and in 2021 won the Jhalak Prize with her novel The First Woman.
Dr Nobunye Levin is a Lecturer in Film Studies at King’s College London. She is a filmmaker and scholar. Her films and research are concerned with experiences from the Global South expressed through film aesthetics, the politics of aesthetics, radical cinemas, decolonial feminisms, anti-racism, and tactics of feminist filmmaking. Her recent film work includes Dreaming is serious work (2025).
Access
This event will be taking place at Chisenhale Gallery. Chisenhale Gallery has flat access with an all-genders, fully accessible toilet. This event will be seated. Earplugs and ear guards are available for visitors to use. This event will be documented for marketing and archival purposes.
We are committed to ensuring our events are accessible for all. Please contact [email protected] to discuss your access needs. We will endeavour to meet all requests where possible. Please be advised that requests should be made two weeks in advance of the event.
Event venue & nearby stays
Chisenhale Gallery, 64 Chisenhale Road, London, United Kingdom
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