Screenings from the collective project the AfroGreeks

Following the panel Deconstructing “white thinking” on its own turf, AILF visitors will have the opportunity to watch clips from the video installation and filmed public events created by the ongoing community project the AfroGreeks (11 films). The project is run by the Døcumatism collective and the Afro-Greek protagonists themselves and is presented as a video installation complemented by public events, workshops, a podcast, musical events, discussions, screenings and audiovisual material from the history of the African diaspora in Greece and the Mediterranean over the past four centuries.

Film list:

1. the AfroGreeks – Prologue (Digital video, color, stereo sound, duration: 14’)

2.the AfroGreeks – Aggelos (Digital video, 3 channels, color, stereo sound, duration: 10’ 38’’)

3.the AfroGreeks – Jessica (Digital video, 3 channels, color, stereo sound, duration: 7’38’’)

4.the AfroGreeks – Alimamy (Digital video, 3 channels, color, stereo sound, duration: 8’19’’)

5.the AfroGreeks – Public events (Digital video, color, stereo sound, duration: 14’)

6.the AfroGreeks – Grace (Digital video, 3 channels, color, stereo sound, duration: 5’28’’)

7.the AfroGreeks – The Art of Now – Dancing in the space of togetherness NEON (Digital video, color, stereo sound, duration: 2’20’’)

8.the AfroGreeks – Mikel (Digital video, 3 channels, color, stereo sound, duration: 7’29’’)

9.the AfroGreeks – Remember This Song concert (Digital video, color, stereo sound, duration: 4’39’’)

10.the AfroGreeks – Keita (Digital video, 3 channels, color, stereo sound, duration: 17’37’’)

11.the AfroGreeks – Samuel (Digital video, 3 channels, color, stereo sound, duration: 7’25’’)

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the AfroGreeks the AfroGreeks is an ongoing community project presented as a video installation and complemented by public live events, workshops, a podcast, musical events, discussions, screenings and audiovisual material from the history of the African diaspora in Greece and the Mediterranean over the past four centuries.

Run by the Døcumatism collective, the AfroGreeks community project-in-progress started in the neighborhood of Kypseli in Athens, the heart of the city’s African diaspora. Through a wide array of public events and artistic actions, the project spread throughout Athens, Greece and abroad, compiling a valuable audiovisual, multimedia archive that is constantly on exhibit and on the road, giving voice to artists of diverse origins, organizing interactive public events (screenings, concerts, discussions, dance battles, public murals, book presentations, etc.) and foregrounding the history of the African diaspora in Greece over the past four centuries. So far, the project has amassed 350 protagonists, 200 interviews, 120 videos, and 85 filmed public live events, creating an audiovisual research archive that is freely accessible at the Døcumatism space in Kypseli and online at

https://documatism.com/project/the-afrogreeks/

The project has been presented at exhibitions and public events in Greece and abroad and has organized educational programs on the history of the African diaspora in the Mediterranean, putting together a freely accessible digital audiovisual archive.

Døcumatism is a collective of filmmakers, artists, sociologists, educators, curators, historians, and journalists who use the moving image and the document as their starting point to organize artistic actions and public discussions on major social issues. Their goal is to explore invisible and inaccessible landscapes (such as prisons, migrant camps, etc.) and offer possible solutions by rendering the “invisible” visible. From research and preparation to production and presentation, every step of the project functions as an autonomous system designed to spark wider debates, turning viewers into witnesses.

The project archive is accessible to artists, students, academics, historians and anyone interested in the history of the African diaspora in Greece. The collective was founded by filmmaker Menelaos Karamaghiolis and since 2009 has been based out of Kypseli, a neighborhood transformed by the collective’s artistic actions into a hub of experimental culture. The collective’s works have been presented internationally at film festivals and art spaces (National Museum of Contemporary Art Athens, Rodeo, Serpentine Gallery London, Centre d’ Art Contemporain Geneva, Engadin Art Talks Zurich, NEON, Loop Festival Barcelona, Eleusis European Capital of Culture 2023). The collective’s public events have been organized in collaboration with local and national institutions, such as the Municipalities of Athens, Heraklion, and Geneva, the National Library, the French Institute of Greece (Institut français de Grèce), and the Museum of Cycladic Art among others.