The Permanent Delegation of Italy to UNESCO joined the celebrations of the 20th anniversary of the 2005 UNESCO Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions. Italy contributed to this important anniversary – solemnly celebrated these days in Paris to coincide with the holding of the Conference of the 159 member states that are party to the Convention – in particular with the screening of the film “We Were Here” (2024), by Fred Kuwornu, an Italian-Ghanaian filmmaker who, with this work, wanted to tell an unconventional story of the African experience in Renaissance Europe.
The film was made for the 60th Venice Art Biennale, entitled “Strangers Everywhere”, and the one at UNESCO was the first public screening of the work in France, following its premiere in Afrocannes last May.
Focusing on the representation of black Africans in the European artistic tradition from the Renaissance onwards, in “We were here” it is the author himself who takes the viewer on an empathetic journey, which turns the spotlight on the vicissitudes of Afro-descendants in Western societies over the centuries.
The film also dedicates space to the presence of black identity in the art world. As part of the celebrations of the 2005 UNESCO Convention, which for twenty years has been committed to promoting the development of expressions and creative industries on a global scale, with this film the director aimed to identify a historical moment of great intercultural exchange and “proto-globalisation”, in which certain experiences, submerged in the dominant historiography, actually allow us to trace many analogies with contemporary global society.
The screening was held in UNESCO’s Cinema Hall, in the presence of Delegates from the Organisation’s Member States as well as representatives of the Parisian cultural world. The film was introduced by the institutional greetings of the Permanent Representative of Italy to UNESCO, Ambassador Liborio Stellino, UNESCO Deputy Director General for Culture, Ernesto Ottone Ramírez, and the author himself, Fred Kuwornu.
