It’s Feb. 18, 2020, as I write. Professor Idrissa Ouédraogo died exactly a year ago on this day. He was an eminent Burkinabé filmmaker of over 40 films, including the celebrated 1990 film Tilai, after the release of which he became the first Burkinabé filmmaker in history to win the top prize of the Yennenga Stallion at FESPACO and the Grand Prix at Cannes. Two days before his passing, the Marvel superhero film Black Panther, directed by Ryan Coogler, was released. A week prior, I had learned about Black History Month for the first time. At the time, I could not put to words my mixed feelings about the historic release of Black Panther and the loss of an eminent filmmaker. At least not until I read an article by Professor Idrissou Mora-Kpai of Ithaca College, New York, on the State of “African” Cinema. So today, while celebrating both the life of Idrissa Ouédraogo and the influence of Black Panther, I look back at who gets to tell and celebrate African stories and who receives recognition for it.

I came to know Professor Ouédraogo after hearing of his passing. I immediately watched his film Samba Traoré, which explores the parallel experience of living in a rural and city life. The protagonist Samba escapes with stolen money from the city — which is depicted as harsh and precarious — to his village which promises social and economic security. However, Samba is constantly haunted by his past life in the city. His actions eventually catch up with him and his newly established status as a real man in the village falls apart. This film is more than just an African moral story. Through the experiences of Samba, Ouédraogo calls for a redefinition of masculinity in a manner that is both genuine to the reality of an African and generative to a variety of social contexts. Ouédraogo believed that “it is the [shareability] of affect that might well open the world onto the road to egalitarianism, and he accordingly sought to address the great human problems through the prisms of love, hatred, violence, vengeance.” To me, this meant that the experiences of Africans are not unique when it comes down to affect and thus, our cultural understanding of Africa should go beyond cognitive, conceptual and abstract knowledge.

Being that I had just watched Black Panther, I realized that its fictional narrative is largely in conversation with Professor Ouédraogo’s philosophy. Not only does Black Panther call for collaboration between the different cultural ethnicities within Wakanda, but it also calls for their collective acknowledgment in the world arena — not just to satisfy a shallow need for diversity, but also to influence world order. In the post-credit scene, King T'challa is shown at a UN conference, where he addresses the world by saying, “the illusion of division threatened our very existence … more connects us than separates us ...we must find a way to look after one another as if we were one single tribe.” Through these words, Black Panther alludes to Ouédraogo’s philosophy of going beyond cultural specificity in the representation and celebration of African history. But while Black Panther is clearly acknowledged in the global arena, Professor Ouédraogo’s films remain in the shadows.

Up until the time of his passing, Professor Ouédraogo was not able to make such features as Tilai and Samba Traoré that had widespread influence in World Cinema. Partly because of his philosophy of geo-aesthetics that went against the expectations of a neocolonialist western audience. Consider the 1997 film Kini and Adams, which depicts actors from different parts of Africa, including the renowned John Kani, in a fictional set in Zimbabwe. While speaking in English, the actors play out the story of two best friends facing economic and social challenges in a village while dreaming of a better life elsewhere. One cannot easily classify these characters to a particular African context because there is nothing about them that is exceptionally African despite the ethnicity of the actors themselves. They are simply people living in a world of chaos while hoping for a better future, a narrative that is transferable to any context. So while Black Panther calls for diasporic unity by also embracing the material presentations of the cultural practices in Wakanda, Kini and Adams moves away from such cultural details and instead solely focuses on the socio-political circumstances uniting the people. Ouédraogo hoped to continue fighting against representational inequality in World Cinema by presenting these“aesthetics that can navigate the dialects of specificity and generalizability.”

However, in conversation with Professor Mora-Kpai about his work on the topic, I learned that unfortunately Kini and Adams was largely rejected in France where it was produced simply because it diverted from the definitions of a francophone cinema that aligns with European cultural domination. Meanwhile, Black Panther is celebrated around the world for its depiction of African heroes, which for many felt like the first time it was happening. Yet Kini and Adams also honor the heroes of our time like John Kani.

Some might interpret my reflections as going against the celebration of African history and stories through films like Black Panther. Rest assured that this is not the case. I understand that Black Panther is made by a commercial media franchise with an established audience, as opposed to Kini and Adams and other films by Professor Ouédraogo. In fact, I imagine the audiences to be different as well, particularly because African films tend to circulate within specific cinema spaces outside the monopolistic Hollywood commercial scene. Even so, I think it is important to celebrate African history with a keen and critical mind on who we are celebrating, why we are celebrating them and whether or not Africans themselves are included in the celebration of their own history.

And with that, I hope you join me in honoring the life and incredible contributions of Professor Idrissa Ouédraogo as part of Black History Month. May he rest in eternal peace.