Fred Kuwornu is an Italian-Ghanaian filmmaker and activist best known for his documentaries Inside Buffalo (2010), about the Black American soldiers who participated in the liberation of Italy during World War II, and 18 Ius Soli (2012), about the children of immigrants in Italy and their struggles for legal and social recognition. This summer he has begun screening his latest film project, Blaxploitalian: One Hundred Years of Blackness in Italian Cinema (2016; supported by a grant from the Lettera27 foundation). A sweeping documentary inspired by Leonardo De Franceschi’s seminal collection L’Africa in Italia as well as Kuwornu’s own experiences in the Italian film industry, Blaxploitalian recounts the century-long yet underappreciated history of people of African descent in Italian cinema. Like Kuwornu’s previous projects, this documentary has an explicit social mission. He is using Blaxploitalian to connect with an international network of activists with the ultimate goal of developing a platform to support advocacy for greater diversity in media. 

Sponsored by African and African American Studies, The Leslie Center for the Humanities, Nelson A. Rockefeller Center for Public Policy and the Social Sciences, Associate Dean for the Arts and Humanities, Office of the Provost, John Sloan Dickey Center for International Understanding, Frank J. Guarini Associate Dean for International Studies and Interdisciplinary Programs, Department of German Studies, Department of History, Department of French and Italian, Department of English and Creative Writing, Department of Studio Art, Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship Program, Jewish Studies Program, Office of Institutional Diversity and Equity Department of Theater, Department of Anthropology, and the Department of Spanish and Portuguese.