Dr. Chérif Këita
Dr. Chérif Këita, Professor of French and Francophone Literatures and Cultures at Carleton College will visit Gustavus Adolphus College on Wednesday, Oct. 29 to present his documentary film Remembering Nokutela. The film will be screened at 7 p.m. in room 127 of Confer Hall. The event is free and open to the public.
Remembering Nokutela chronicles Këita’s four-year journey to uncover the story of Nokutela Dube (1873-1917), the long-forgotten woman pioneer of the liberation movement in South Africa, and is the latest chapter in Keita’s series on early South African liberation. Woven into this deeply emotional and eerily serendipitous journey are the little-known connections between the director’s hometown of Northfield, Minn., and the birth of an important pro-democracy and social justice movement, the African National Congress, in Inanda (KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa), in the early 20th century.
Këita, a native of Mali, previously directed Oberlin-Inanda: The Life and Times of John L. Dube (2005), which looks at the life of John L. Dube, founding president of the African National Congress (then called the South African Native National Congress) and an early figure in the struggle against white rule in South Africa; and Cemetery Stories: A Rebel Missionary in South Africa (2010), a sequel of sorts to Oberlin-Inanda, as Këita charts the connection between Dube and William and Ida Belle Wilcox, an American missionary couple who lived in South Africa in the 1910s.
Dr. Këita’s visit is sponsored by the Office of the Provost, and the African Studies Program, and the Department of Modern Languages, Literatures & Cultures.
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Media Contact: Director of Media Relations and Internal Communication Luc Hatlestad
luch@gustavus.edu
507-933-7510