This is a past event
Ethnographic Film Series
The filmmaker, Dr Shihan de Silva Jayasuriya, will be present at the screening and a discussion with her will follow the film.
The film explores the cultural memories of the largest Afro-Sri Lankan community. Dances and songs (in creolised Portugese, a language of trade and commerce for 350 years in Sri Lanka) connect the Afro-Sri Lankans to Africa, their erstwhile homeland. The vast majority of Afro-Asians were pushed to the margins of colonialism and by the loss of patronage. Traditional dances and songs enable Afro-Sri Lankans to carve out a niche in the cultural arena of their host land. Fading memories of slavery and the slave trade can still be discerned in the narratives of their oral literature.
Dr de Silva Jayasuriya is a Senior Fellow at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies, School of Advanced Study at the University of London.
- Speaker
- Dr Shihan de Silva Jayasuriya
- Hosted by
- Elphinstone Institute
- Venue
- MacRobert Building, MR051
- Contact
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Free admission
No booking required