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Ambiguous Encounters: ALGIERS – The Pan-African Festival of Algiers 196

Sunday 6th September 2026

As part of the Barbican’s landmark Project a Black Planet season, Ambiguous Encounters: ALGIERS – The Pan-African Festival of Algiers 1969 explores one of the defining moments in twentieth-century Pan-African history through a remarkable programme of rare films, restored archive footage and contemporary documentary. Looking beyond the famous 1969 Pan-African Festival itself, the event examines Algiers as a city shaped by revolution, decolonisation and international solidarity, revealing why the Algerian capital became a meeting place for liberation movements from across Africa and the global diaspora.

 

The Pan-African Festival of Algiers, held in July 1969, brought together artists, musicians, writers, filmmakers and political leaders from newly independent African nations and Black communities around the world. Figures including Miriam Makeba, Nina Simone, Archie Shepp, members of the Black Panther Party and liberation movements from Southern Africa all participated in what became one of the most significant cultural and political gatherings of the twentieth century. The festival celebrated African independence while demonstrating how music, cinema, literature and visual art could become powerful expressions of freedom and collective identity.

This specially curated programme traces Algiers before, during and after the festival through a series of rarely screened works. It begins with Vues d’Alger (1896), filmed by Alexandre Promio for the Lumière brothers, among the earliest surviving moving images ever recorded on the African continent. The programme then moves to official Algerian Festival Pan-Africain newsreels from 1969 before concluding with Afric Hotel (2011), directed by Nabil Djedouani and Hassen Ferhani. Set inside a dilapidated hotel housing West African migrants in modern-day Algiers, the documentary reflects on migration, belonging and the changing identity of a city that once stood at the heart of international liberation movements.

Audiences will also see a specially recorded introduction from filmmaker and archivist Nabil Djedouani, founder of the Archives Numériques du Cinéma Algérien, an open-access initiative dedicated to preserving and restoring Algeria’s rich but often overlooked cinematic heritage. His work has played an important role in recovering films that document Algeria’s struggle for independence and its position as a centre for Pan-African political and cultural exchange.

This event forms part of Ambiguous Encounters: Pan-Africanism in the Post-Colonial City, a weekend programme curated by Abiba Coulibaly marking sixty years since the Tricontinental Conference and the First World Festival of Negro Arts. Through film, archival material and critical reflection, the series explores how cities such as Havana, Dakar, Algiers and Lagos became spaces where ideas of Pan-Africanism were debated, celebrated and reshaped. Ambiguous Encounters: ALGIERS – The Pan-African Festival of Algiers 1969 offers a fascinating opportunity to revisit one of the most influential chapters in modern African cultural history and to understand its continuing impact on contemporary discussions around identity, migration, solidarity and liberation.

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