Press Releases

Documentary Film Viewing: “Scattered Africa: Faces and Voices of the African Diaspora”

January 30, 2008

In the context of the International Conference “African Diaspora and Créolité:  Convergences and Divergences” to be held at the University of Mauritius from February 4-6, 2008, the U.S. Embassy, in collaboration with the Municipality of Beau-Bassin/Rose-Hill, is pleased to invite the public to a free viewing of a documentary film entitled: “Scattered Africa: Faces and Voices of the African Diaspora.”  The 53-minute documentary will be presented by the producer, Dr. Sheila Walker, on Saturday, February 2, 2008 at 3 p.m. at the Salle des Fetes of Plaza, in Rose-Hill.

A synopsis of the documentary:  During the centuries of the African slave trade, an estimated 100 million African people were torn from their homelands. Dr. Sheila S. Walker takes viewers across the Americas, to Argentina, Uruguay and the United States, exploring past and current contributions that African people made to American culture.

Dr. Sheila S. Walker, Ph.D, cultural anthropologist and filmmaker, is in Mauritius as a U.S. speaker for the International Conference “African Diaspora and Créolité:  Convergences and Divergences.” She is Executive Director of Afrodiaspora, Inc., a non-profit organization that is developing a documentary series and educational materials about the global African Diaspora. She has done extensive fieldwork, lectured, consulted, and participated in cultural events in much of Africa and the African Diaspora. Based on these experiences she organized an international conference on “The African Diaspora and the Modern World; edited the volume African Roots/American Cultures: Africa in the Creation of the Americas”; and produced the documentary “Scattered Africa: Faces and Voices of the African Diaspora.”

A member of the International Scientific and Technical Committee of the UNESCO Slave Route Project, she recently produced the documentary “Slave Routes: A Global Vision” for the project. Dr. Walker was Director of the Center for African and African Studies, the Annabel Irion Worsham Centennial Professor in the College of Liberal Arts, and a Professor of Anthropology and at the University of Texas at Austin; and was the William and Camille Cosby, Professor in the Humanities and Social Sciences, Professor of Anthropology, and Director of the African Diaspora and the World Program at Spelman College.