Lagos, Nigeria: 
Decasia #2

The second edition of the Decasia archive film festival is happening after six years, as part of Arsenal on Location. Launched by the filmmaker and curator Didi Cheeka (Lagos Film Society), the festival first took place in 2019 in cooperation with the Nigerian Film Corporation (NFC), Goethe University Frankfurt, the DFF - Deutsches Filminstitut & Filmmuseum and Arsenal. The pandemic prevented its immediate continuation. It was supposed to take place every two years in alternation with Archival Assembly in Berlin. The current edition is supported by Goethe University and the Goethe Institut.

Didi Cheeka: "Film archives and film archival practices are undergoing dynamic renewal across Africa - affording the possibility of engaging with the existing, established mode of historiography. The African audiovisual present is increasingly replete with images and sounds from the archive - testifying to a veritable "archive fever" infecting a new generation of [African] filmmakers, artists, and curators: its symptoms manifests in an ongoing search for images produced in times gone by for re-views and re-uses. What accounts for this present fascination with the past? Why this need, this desire to look back at yesterday, through the eyes of today? Perhaps, it stems from a so-called Afropessimism, a tendency to turn away from the disappointments of the present? Or, preferably, the present is so dramatic, so rich in events and to move forward demands a look back - as there's so much the past can teach the continent concerning how to navigate the present? Decasia #2 comes some five years after the first edition and 10years after the first international symposium held in Lagos to consider archival practices on the continent. From colonial cinema that constructed a regime of truth about the colony, to cinema as resistance against colonialism; from digitized films from the pre-Nollywood era, to panel discussions, and films creatively utilizing archive footage to speculate on new truths, this year's festival provides a platform to explore the theme, Unleashing the African Archive." (27.-30.7.)