The African Encounters Video Series has been utilitzed on campus and by other universities and museums. Fortunately in the late 1970’s and 1980’s, the University of Washington’s budget permitted the free use of the studio and professional staff required to create video productions for classroom use. Without that capability, the African footage in this Collection likely would have remained in shoeboxes and eventually been tossed out. The fieldwork undertaken by University of Washington graduate students, faculty, and guest lecturers preserves many traditions that are no longer viable. Dr. Morell secured initial funding from the Graduate School for the first productions and made the series a self-sustaining project after that time.
This video compares Ekeleke and Okoroshi, two different, separate masquerades in a single Igbo community. (Fieldwork and video by Herbert M. Cole)
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Kofi Awoonor narrates this short traditional story. One version is in Ewe and a second in English.
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Kofi Awoonor reads poetry and speaks of the different pressures, experiences, and thoughts which shaped his poetry in the 1960’s, in the United States, and in prison in Ghana in 1976.
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Kofi Awoonor speaks of the Ewe oral tradition, singing songs of its poets. He reads and discusses his own early poetry and the clash of cultures he experienced in going abroad. Includes Karen Morell’s interview and her visuals from 1979 in Ghana.
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A video of still images, many historical, produced for a 1985 exhibition, Arts of the Akan. The program provides an overview of the cultural and historical context in which art functions. Narration and recent images by Ray Silverman.
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An introduction to one of the most important religious traditions of the Akan people, the veneration of the Tano River. Fieldwork and filming by Ray Silverman in 1980.
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Ray Silverman used super-8 film to record the process of lost wax casting during field work in the northern Akan area in 1980. Prayers of brasscaster read by Kofi Awoonor.
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