African Film Archive

THE REEL

A living discovery layer for African cinema — 1895 to present.

Browse by Era

Pre-History

1895–1954

Colonial and ethnographic record. Not African-directed; preserved as historical context.

Liberation

1955–1969

The first African-directed cinema, emerging alongside independence movements.

Manifesto

1970–1979

FEPACI, FESPACO, and the era of overtly political cinema.

Flourishing

1980–1989

Sembene, Cisse, Mambety, and the wider canon reach international recognition.

Video-Wave

1990–1999

The Nollywood video-film revolution alongside continued auteur cinema.

Festival-Era

2000–2009

African cinema takes the world festival stage.

New Voices

2010–2019

Diop, Kahiu, Nyoni, and a digitally native generation of filmmakers.

Present

2020–now

Streaming, post-pandemic distribution, and the current generation of African cinema.

From the Archive

RESTORATION — 2026-07-01

Timbuktu gets a 4K restoration

Abderrahmane Sissako's 2014 Cannes standout Timbuktu has been remastered in 4K, giving new visibility to the first film by a Black African-born director nominated for the Best Foreign Language Oscar.

FIELD NOTES — 2026-07-15

Whisper captioning project reaches its first milestone

Early tests of an open Whisper-based subtitle pipeline for archival African cinema have produced usable Wolof and Bambara transcripts, a first step toward wider-language access across the collection.

FESTIVAL DISPATCH — 2026-07-20

FESPACO 2027 dates announced

Ouagadougou's Pan-African Film and Television Festival has confirmed its next edition, keeping its place as the continent's longest-running showcase for African-directed cinema.

ACQUISITION — 2026-07-25

Arsenal Berlin digitizes another reel from its African cinema holdings

Arsenal Institute for Film and Video Art has added another newly digitized print from its African cinema holdings to its public access catalog, part of an ongoing preservation effort.