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James Williams in conversation for SFS 2021

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James Williams discusses his prize-winning book on African cinema

  • Date08 Jul 2021
  • Reading time 1min

A video conversation between James Williams, the 2020 R. Gapper Book Prize winner and director of the RHUL Centre for Visual Cultures, and Patrick Crowley (University College Cork). Recorded for the 2021 Virtual Conference of the Society for French Studies.

Ethics and Aesthetics in Contemporary African Cinema.png (1)

Image shows a portion of the cover of Ethics and Aesthetics in Contemporary African Cinema. The film still, in which a hand coming in from the edge of the frame is pointing a gun at the head of a man who is staring back, is from Daratt (Dry Season) (2006), dir. Mahamat-Saleh Haroun.

Professor James Williams has won the 2020 R. Gapper Prize for the best book in French Studies published in 2019 with his study Ethics and Aesthetics in Contemporary African Cinema: The Politics of Beauty. This is the first book exclusively on film to be recognised by the prestigious award.

In this video, he talks about the book and its inception with jury chair Patrick Crowley. 

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