Fred Kudjo Kuwornu | "We Were Here: The Untold History of Black Africans in Renaissance Europe"

The ERC project FemSMed will be hosting filmmaker Fred Kudjo Kuwornu for a screening of his documentary film We Were Here: The Untold History of Black Africans in Renaissance Europe, 2024 | English, French, Portuguese, Spanish, Italian, Dutch. Hebrew subtitles.

This multilingual documentary explores the roles of Africans and their descendants in Renaissance Europe as revealed in compelling paintings, drawings, sculptures, and printed books of the period, interviewing historians, art historians, scholars of Black Studies, Black activists, and  Art Curators.

The screening will take place on Wednesday, June 11, 2025,  2:15-4:00 PM, at Tel Aviv University, Gilman Building, Room 223.

The filmmaker, Fred Kudjo Kuwornu, will introduce his film. The event will be moderated by Dr. Irit Back (Department of Middle Eastern and African History, TAU)

Fred Kudjo Kuwornu is a socially engaged artist, filmmaker and scholar whose work is deeply influenced by his background as a person of African descent. Born and raised in Italy, Kuwornu is based in New York. His unique background is reflected in his triple citizenship, holding Italian, Ghanaian, and U.S. passports. Kuwornu received an MA in Political Science from the University of Bologna. By consistently bridging past and present, seen and unseen, hegemonic and subaltern, Kuwornu's practice emerges as a vital contribution to contemporary visual culture. His work not only recovers lost narratives but also proposes new frameworks for understanding the complex interplay between history, identity, race, power and representation in our globalized world.