We Were Here Film Screening and Q&A with Director Fred Kuwornu (Wednesday, Feb. 3, 2025)
Italian Studies, UTM, warmly invites you to attend an upcoming screening of We Were Here - The Untold History of Black Africans in Renaissance Europe (2024), and the Q&A to follow, with filmmaker Fred Kuwornu.
Film Title: We Were Here (Unveiling Black Presence in Renaissance Art; 2024)
Date: February 3, 2025
Time: 5:00p.m.–7:00p.m.
Location: UTM - IB 120
Organizers: Departments of Language Studies, Visual Studies, English & Drama (UTM)
Film synopsis:
We Were Here - The Untold History of Black Africans in Renaissance Europe, exhibited in the Central Pavilion directed by Adriano Pedrosa at the 60ᵗʰ International Art Exhibition of the Venice Biennale, sheds light on the overlooked presence of African and Black individuals in Renaissance Europe, highlighting their depiction in masterpieces by some of the era’s most celebrated artists. How did they come to Europe? Why were they portrayed? Were they truly all servants or slaves? If the Black faces portrayed in these Renaissance masterpieces could speak, what would they tell us?
Filmmaker Biography
Fred Kudjo Kuwornu is an Afro-Italian and U.S. multi-hyphenate socially-engaged artist, filmmaker and scholar based in New York. His work bridges past and present, exploring identity and race through historical remixing of archival materials. Kuwornu's films have been exhibited at the 60ᵗʰ Venice Art Biennale (2024), Museum of Moving Image (NY), Library of Congress, and international film festivals.
