Paulin Soumanou Vieyra, the Soviet Union, and Cold War Circuits for African Cinema, 1958-1978

Abstract

Based on previously unexamined documents in Soviet archives, this essay shows Paulin S. Vieyra's key role as a "cinematic internationalist" who used the socialist and Cold War film networks to advance African cinema. As a filmmaker, producer, scholar, and Senegalese government official, Vieyra took part in Soviet film life, beginning with the 1957 International Youth Festival in Moscow. Vieyra participated in the making of the Soviet documentary about the First Negro Arts Festival in Dakar, African Rhythms; represented the Pan-African Federation of Filmmakers at the Tashkent Festival for African, Asian, and Latin American Cinema; and advocated for African films on the Moscow International Film Festival jury in 1971, 1973, and 1985. He also traveled to the United States, as a member of a FEPACI delegation in 1973 and as a participant in a major Senegalese cinema retrospective at the Museum of American Art in New York and the Pacific Film Archive at Berkeley in 1978. Vieyra's advocacy connected two politically disparate film cultures that supported African cinema during the decolonization era—Soviet cinema and militant Third Cinema. He used Cold War infrastructures in the Soviet Union and the United States to promote and establish African cinemas internationally.