Estrella Sendra
Biographic Data
| ID | 636593 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Estrella Sendra |
| GIVEN NAMES | Estrella |
| FAMILY NAME | Sendra |
| SIGNATURE | SENDRA E |
| AFFILIATIONS | King's College London |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-8344-2928 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 14 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 2 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 14 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2018 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 1 |
Curating Africa in Contemporary Film Festivals in Senegal
Seventy years after the first African-directed productions on the continent, the film industry is still precarious. In response, some festivals in Senegal are innovatively networking and collaborating to build capacity and enhance the circulation of both Senegalese and African films more broadly. However, such innovation is still under-researched within film festival studies, particularly in the context of the African continent. This chapter addr…
From Africa to London to the World
Film Africa is currently the largest festival and meeting point in the UK celebrating the best of African cinema. This chapter probes the festival’s goals and how its practices shape the circulation of African cinema in London and beyond. We begin with an exploration of the festival’s understanding of “Africa” in dialogue with the festival location. We suggest that the festival adopts an expansive definition, encompassing the continent, diaspora,…
Recentring marginality
This article offers a close analysis of the leading role of Sili in La petite vendeuse de soleil (1999), in order to examine the central place of marginality in Djibril Diop Mambéty’s cinema, and its legacy in contemporary Senegalese film productions. The study was inspired by the production in 2022 of a documentary film on Lissa Balera, the Senegalese actress playing the role of Sili, directed by Senegalese filmmaker Georges Diodji and entitled …
Urban creativity in Dakar
Dakar is a city continuously re-signified and transformed through arts, embodying postcolonial dialogues and serving as a public sphere for speculating African futures. Inspired by Oumar Ndao's multimodal portrait of Dakar as an “uncertain territory” (Ndao, 2020) and Felwine Sarr's philosophical concept of Afrotopia (Sarr, 2019), this article examines contemporary relationships between arts, creativity, urban spaces and the world within a postcol…
Enseigner et apprendre avec Sembène, le tailleur d'Afrotopies
Traveling to Audiences
As African countries gained independence, filmmakers saw cinema as a weapon for decolonization. With the increasing disappearance of cinema venues following the global economic crisis of the 1970s, however, films were rarely able to reach local audiences. In the twenty-first century, especially since 2010, new audience-centered curatorial and managerial approaches have turned film festivals into key platforms for introducing African cinema to loc…
Film as Sound Art
Teaching film often involves un-learning previously taught histories of cinema to find instead ‘herstories’ (Dovey, 2018) and theirstories of cinema. This video essay constitutes an illustrative example of this practice, showing how Lebanese woman-led film Caramel (2007) is taught at SOAS, University of London to emphasise the crucial role of sound in narrative while rethinking the film canon and encouraging critical reflection on the gaze. By cr…
Toward Decolonized Film Festival Worlds
This chapter is in part a manifesto and in part an engagement with the thinking and practice already re-shaping film festivals in this era of decolonization and Covid-19. We take as a starting point and analyze the provocative docu-fiction film titled Film Festival Film (dir. Perivi Katjavivi and Mpumelelo Mcata, 2019, South Africa) which raises myriad, difficult, and enduring questions about film festivals and contemporary film culture. Reading …
Use of Senegalese music to raise coronavirus awareness on social media
Senegal is a country with a long history of oral tradition, where the griot is the leading figure responsible for the transmission of messages from generation to generation over centuries. They are highly regarded and considered in society as a mediator and advisor through their music or spoken word. As Senegal witnessed the arrival of the first cases of coronavirus, a large number of musicians used social media to disseminate songs raising coron…
Banlieue Films Festival (BFF)
This article examines small film festivals in the socio-cultural context of Senegal. Through the case study of the Banlieue Films Festival (BFF) in Dakar, founded in 2013 by Abdel Aziz Boye, I analyse the crucial role of festivals in strengthening the film industry, fostering cinephilia and encouraging the practical application of cultural policies. I suggest that contemporary film production, particularly, in the past five years (2015-2020) has …
Documentary film festivals vol. 1
Documentary Film Festivals, divided into two volumes: Methods, History, Politics and Changes, Challenges, Professional Perspectives, appears two decades after the significant growth of documentary film festivals. With the conviction that these “are here to stay” (vol. 1: xi), editors Aida Vallejo and Ezra Winton engage in an exhaustive work of collecting a multiplicity of voices to prove the usefulness and necessity of establishing specific theor…
Women and Sexuality in A frican Cinema
African cultures' views on intimacy and privacy have had an approach to sex, nudity, and eroticism that differs from the openness associated with that of most Western cultures. This is one of the factors that explains the relatively scarce displays of sexuality in African cinema. However, in the past two decades, an increasing number of films made by African filmmakers in the continent and the diaspora have featured stories by women with fluid se…
Fiftieth Anniversary of the First World Festival of Negro Arts
This essay takes as its starting point two hymns from the First World Festival of Negro Arts in 1966 – one composed by Abdoulaye Ndiaye “Thiosanne” and the other played by saxophonist Bira Guèye and sung by the griot Mada Thiam – in order to analyze and rethink the involvement of the population in this festival. In the light of the fiftieth anniversary of this historic event, the essay offers a comparative study of the 1966 and 2010 festivals, wh…
Displacement and the Quest for Identity in Alain Gomis's Cinema
In this essay, I seek to explore the cinema of Alain Gomis through a focus on his depiction of displacement, particularly in L’Afrance / As a Man (2001), Andalucia / Andalusia (2007), and Tey / Today (2012), in order to show that these films share a similar aesthetic approach. I argue that Gomis’s aesthetic approach is marked by intimacy and embodiment, which are strategies employed within the rich Senegalese film heritage in general. Gomis’s mul…
Displacement and the Quest for Identity in Alain Gomis's Cinema
In this essay, I seek to explore the cinema of Alain Gomis through a focus on his depiction of displacement, particularly in L’Afrance / As a Man (2001), Andalucia / Andalusia (2007), and Tey / Today (2012), in order to show that these films share a similar aesthetic approach. I argue that Gomis’s aesthetic approach is marked by intimacy and embodiment, which are strategies employed within the rich Senegalese film heritage in general. Gomis’s mul…
Fiftieth Anniversary of the First World Festival of Negro Arts
This essay takes as its starting point two hymns from the First World Festival of Negro Arts in 1966 – one composed by Abdoulaye Ndiaye “Thiosanne” and the other played by saxophonist Bira Guèye and sung by the griot Mada Thiam – in order to analyze and rethink the involvement of the population in this festival. In the light of the fiftieth anniversary of this historic event, the essay offers a comparative study of the 1966 and 2010 festivals, wh…
Displacement and the Quest for Identity in Alain Gomis's Cinema
In this essay, I seek to explore the cinema of Alain Gomis through a focus on his depiction of displacement, particularly in L’Afrance / As a Man (2001), Andalucia / Andalusia (2007), and Tey / Today (2012), in order to show that these films share a similar aesthetic approach. I argue that Gomis’s aesthetic approach is marked by intimacy and embodiment, which are strategies employed within the rich Senegalese film heritage in general. Gomis’s mul…
Women and Sexuality in A frican Cinema
African cultures' views on intimacy and privacy have had an approach to sex, nudity, and eroticism that differs from the openness associated with that of most Western cultures. This is one of the factors that explains the relatively scarce displays of sexuality in African cinema. However, in the past two decades, an increasing number of films made by African filmmakers in the continent and the diaspora have featured stories by women with fluid se…
Banlieue Films Festival (BFF)
This article examines small film festivals in the socio-cultural context of Senegal. Through the case study of the Banlieue Films Festival (BFF) in Dakar, founded in 2013 by Abdel Aziz Boye, I analyse the crucial role of festivals in strengthening the film industry, fostering cinephilia and encouraging the practical application of cultural policies. I suggest that contemporary film production, particularly, in the past five years (2015-2020) has …
Documentary film festivals vol. 1
Documentary Film Festivals, divided into two volumes: Methods, History, Politics and Changes, Challenges, Professional Perspectives, appears two decades after the significant growth of documentary film festivals. With the conviction that these “are here to stay” (vol. 1: xi), editors Aida Vallejo and Ezra Winton engage in an exhaustive work of collecting a multiplicity of voices to prove the usefulness and necessity of establishing specific theor…
Use of Senegalese music to raise coronavirus awareness on social media
Senegal is a country with a long history of oral tradition, where the griot is the leading figure responsible for the transmission of messages from generation to generation over centuries. They are highly regarded and considered in society as a mediator and advisor through their music or spoken word. As Senegal witnessed the arrival of the first cases of coronavirus, a large number of musicians used social media to disseminate songs raising coron…
Traveling to Audiences
As African countries gained independence, filmmakers saw cinema as a weapon for decolonization. With the increasing disappearance of cinema venues following the global economic crisis of the 1970s, however, films were rarely able to reach local audiences. In the twenty-first century, especially since 2010, new audience-centered curatorial and managerial approaches have turned film festivals into key platforms for introducing African cinema to loc…
Film as Sound Art
Teaching film often involves un-learning previously taught histories of cinema to find instead ‘herstories’ (Dovey, 2018) and theirstories of cinema. This video essay constitutes an illustrative example of this practice, showing how Lebanese woman-led film Caramel (2007) is taught at SOAS, University of London to emphasise the crucial role of sound in narrative while rethinking the film canon and encouraging critical reflection on the gaze. By cr…
Toward Decolonized Film Festival Worlds
This chapter is in part a manifesto and in part an engagement with the thinking and practice already re-shaping film festivals in this era of decolonization and Covid-19. We take as a starting point and analyze the provocative docu-fiction film titled Film Festival Film (dir. Perivi Katjavivi and Mpumelelo Mcata, 2019, South Africa) which raises myriad, difficult, and enduring questions about film festivals and contemporary film culture. Reading …
Enseigner et apprendre avec Sembène, le tailleur d'Afrotopies
Curating Africa in Contemporary Film Festivals in Senegal
Seventy years after the first African-directed productions on the continent, the film industry is still precarious. In response, some festivals in Senegal are innovatively networking and collaborating to build capacity and enhance the circulation of both Senegalese and African films more broadly. However, such innovation is still under-researched within film festival studies, particularly in the context of the African continent. This chapter addr…
From Africa to London to the World
Film Africa is currently the largest festival and meeting point in the UK celebrating the best of African cinema. This chapter probes the festival’s goals and how its practices shape the circulation of African cinema in London and beyond. We begin with an exploration of the festival’s understanding of “Africa” in dialogue with the festival location. We suggest that the festival adopts an expansive definition, encompassing the continent, diaspora,…
Recentring marginality
This article offers a close analysis of the leading role of Sili in La petite vendeuse de soleil (1999), in order to examine the central place of marginality in Djibril Diop Mambéty’s cinema, and its legacy in contemporary Senegalese film productions. The study was inspired by the production in 2022 of a documentary film on Lissa Balera, the Senegalese actress playing the role of Sili, directed by Senegalese filmmaker Georges Diodji and entitled …
Urban creativity in Dakar
Dakar is a city continuously re-signified and transformed through arts, embodying postcolonial dialogues and serving as a public sphere for speculating African futures. Inspired by Oumar Ndao's multimodal portrait of Dakar as an “uncertain territory” (Ndao, 2020) and Felwine Sarr's philosophical concept of Afrotopia (Sarr, 2019), this article examines contemporary relationships between arts, creativity, urban spaces and the world within a postcol…
Sociology (12 works) · African history and culture studies (10 works) · Art (10 works) · Cinema and Media Studies (8 works) · History (8 works) · Media studies (7 works) · Movie theater (7 works) · Political science (7 works) · Visual arts (6 works) · Aesthetics (4 works)