Black Italians and Digital Culture in Contemporary Italy

Director Fred Kuwornu discusses issues of culture, race, identity, and citizenship in contemporary Italy drawing from the new arena of social media. Kuwornu shines a spotlight on a generation of Black Italians - artists, entrepreneurs, and bloggers- who have been affirming themselves in Italian culture and society gaining more visibility nationally and in the Global Black Diaspora.  Among the topics: race and national identity, second generations and issues of citizenship in Italy, new media and activism, Black women in Italy, music and media industry. 

Fred Kudjo Kuwornu is an Italian-Ghanaian filmmaker, activist-producer-educator, born and raised in Italy and based in Brooklyn. After his degree in Political Sciences and Mass Media from the University of Bologna, he moved to Rome where he worked as a TV show writer for RAI public television.  After working with the production crew of Spike Lee’s Miracle at St. Anna, Kuwornu made the award-winning documentary Buffalo Soldiers based upon his research on the unknown story of the 92nd Infantry Buffalo Soldiers Division, the African American segregated combat unit, which fought in Europe during WW II. In 2012, he released 18 IUS SOLI  which examines multiculturalism in Italy but also specifically looks at questions of citizenship for the one million children of immigrants born and raised in Italy but are not yet Italian citizens. His 2016 Blaxploitalian 100 Years of Black in Italian Cinema is a diasporic, hybrid, historical, critical, and cosmopolitan documentary on African descent actors in Italian cinema. In 2020 Kuwornu launched Blaq•IT, the first Black Italian web-documentary devoted to the stories of Black Italians in Italy and in the world. 

Lecture at this link:

https://wustl.zoom.us/j/7166260148 

For more information, contact Prof. Elena Dalla Torre:  elenad@wustl.edu