Sheila Petty is professor of media studies at the University of Regina. She has written extensively on issues of cultural representation, identity and nation in African and African diasporic screen media, and has curated film, television and digital media exhibitions for galleries across Canada.  She is author of Contact Zones: Memory, Origin and Discourses in Black Diasporic Cinema, (Wayne State University Press, 2008) and co-editor of the Directory of World Cinema: Africa (Intellect Books, 2015). Her current research focuses on transvergent African cinemas, new Maghrebi cinemas and interpretive strategies for analyzing digital creative cultural practices.

Cultural Sovereignty in Moroccan Amazigh Cinema

This project will study how Indigenous Amazigh cultural heritage is retained and reflected in key Moroccan-based Amazigh film and video texts produced within a national cinematic construct heavily influenced by Arabo-Islamic imperialism, but also by globalization and the remnants of colonization. The research will contribute to current debates around living cultural heritage and identity politics in globalizing cultures, political and cultural sovereignty, control of representation in image production, and modes of resistance to colonialism. The project includes a film screening/debate on “Amazigh Cinema Cultures” and will result in an edited volume on the topic.