African audiovisual heritage and archival futures: the Sudanese case

PhD in Film Studies Research

Background and context ​

This studentship offers a unique opportunity to engage with ongoing research at KCL on Sudanese cinema, audiovisual heritage and cultural memory. Its core research focus is the film and document archive of the artist-filmmaker Hussein Shariffe (1934-2005).  Shariffe was filmmaker, poet, painter and writer who championed social justice and democracy in his native Sudan and beyond. Driven into Egyptian exile during the Islamist dictatorship of Omar al Bashir, Shariffe died in 2005, leaving his work scattered across London, Khartoum and Cairo. Since 2020, the lead supervisor, Erica Carter, has collaborated with Dr Eiman Hussein of the Hussein Shariffe Foundation (HSF) and Talal Afifi of the Sudan Film Factory (SFF) to retrieve and recirculate treasures from the Shariffe archive. Partner organisations have included Cimatheque Cairo, the British Film Institute, the KCL-based project Sudan Memory, and Berlin’s Arsenal Institute for Film and Video Art.  Initiatives are ongoing to restore Shariffe’s  films and make his documents and photos accessible on new digital platforms. That project dovetails with broader efforts by the HSF and SFF to use archival engagement as a force for rebuilding shared memory and community. The Sudanese creative economy experienced a renaissance following the end of Bashir’s dictatorship in 2019. But since 2023, a war between ruling military factions has devastated the country, generating the world’s largest humanitarian crisis, and displacing young creatives across the MENA region, the Gulf and globally. Attacks on Sudanese cultural heritage have been unparalleled, with widespread destruction of libraries, archives, museums and private collections. This studentship offers a doctoral student the chance to be part of re-activating the audiovisual memory and heritage of Sudan, contributing through collaboration with project partners to building resilience amongst creative communities, and re-imagining civil society futures when the current conflict ends. 

Project Code: 2627-ACBB3
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Entry Requirements

This project leads to the award of a PhD in Film Studies. Before you apply, please check the specific entry requirements and once ready, complete the application via King's Apply. Remember to include the Project Code in your application.

Supervisors

​Erica Carter, FBA, is Professor of German and Film at King’s College London and Principal Investigator of the 2026-2028 AHRC-funded project Unhousing Restitution (unrest): African Audio-visual Heritage between Displacement and Return. 

Project Partners

Sudan Film Factory Launched in 2010, Sudan Film Factory (SFF) is an independent platform that aims to revive the film industry and develop filmmaking infrastructure in Sudan.
Hussein Shariffe Foundation. The work of Hussein Shariffe has been an inspiration to many, through his vivid use of colour’s, his artistic films and through his strong patriotism. The foundation is dedicated to honouring the late Hussein Shariffe and his works.

Keywords

• Sudanese cinema
• Audiovisual archives as endangered heritage
• Digital archiving methods and practices
• Archive-based creative practice
• Sudanese memory and peacebuilding

Area of research ​

The successful candidate will work under the supervision of KCL Film Department Professor Erica Carter, collaborating also with the HSF and SFF to research Hussein Shariffe’s life and work in the context of Sudan’s exilic film history and critically endangered cultural heritage. They will have unique research access to the Hussein Shariffe archive, which is currently housed in London, and has been extensively digitised by Prof Carter in collaboration with the HSF, SFF and student researchers. Access will further be facilitated to research resources, mentoring and networking opportunities across a transnational film-cultural research network spanning the UK, Europe and the MENA region. The HSF and SFF Directors will offer one-to-one support to advise on archival access and rights arrangements for the Hussein Shariffe Archive, and on routes to research and creative networks and contacts. Possible areas of research include:

• Hussein Shariffe: archive films and contexts
• Sudanese cinema: patterns of exile and resistance.
• Activating the Sudanese Archive: strategies, barriers and ethics.
• Found Futures: archival fragments as creative/cultural resources.
• Archives, creativity, restitution and knowledge making.
• Other relevant research areas proposed by the candidate (please discuss in advance with the primary supervisor).

​The research could include not just programmes that have opened up spaces of circulation of African cinema, but also, the closing down of many of these initiatives, and the changing ways of showing African cinema in the UK. There are also archives of the work that Dr June Givanni has done with Channel 4 and the BFI. There is also a key concern about the sustainability of the modes of showing and distributing African cinema in the UK, and the basis on which relationships between involved partners are funded. 

Expected outcome ​

Bridging knowledge and expertise across the Arts and Humanities, Social Sciences, and Public Policy, the doctoral research project will have some or all of the following outcomes:

• build situated historical understanding of the work of Hussein Shariffe and other Sudanese cineastes within national, regional and transnational film cultures and creative economies;
• contribute to global knowledge and understanding of African creativity – specifically audiovisual heritage and archive-based digital and creative practice;
• contribute to best practice in preserving audiovisual heritage and film-cultural memory, especially in contexts of conflict and mass displacement;
• generate new understanding of creative and digital approaches to preservation and access in the African audiovisual archive sector;
• foster access to shared memory in diasporic communities in London and internationally.

The successful candidate will have opportunities to contribute to archive and curatorial initiatives with existing KCL, HSF and SFF partners. They will normally have advanced bilingual competence in Arabic and English. An indicative list of partners, drawn from previous and ongoing collaborations, includes the British Film Institute, Birkbeck Institute for the Moving Image, SAFAR Arab Film Festival, Cimatheque Alternative Film Center, Cairo, and the Arsenal Institute for Film and Video Art, Berlin. There are opportunities to submit a PhD dissertation with a creative component. 
 
Suggested readings

• Erica Carter and Laurence Kent, ‘An Infinity of Tactics: Hussein Shariffe's Archive in Motion,’ L'Atalante. Revista de Estudios Cinematográficos 34 (2022), pp.15-136
  
• Didi Cheeka, ‘Accidental Archivism. A Necessary Accident,’ in Stefanie Schulte Strathaus & Vinzenz Hediger, eds, accidental archaism: shaping cinemas futures with remnants of the past (Menon Press, 2023)
  
• Bentley Brown, ‘Sudan’s diaspora dilemma. Filmmaking and the collapse of homeland,’ in Noha Mellor, ed., Routledge Handbook on Arab Cinema (Routledge 2024)
  
• Hayaty Ahmed et al, ‘Sudanese Cinema: Past, Present and Future’, Art and Design Review 09(03,) 202, pp. 268-283​

​Production still from Of Dust and Rubies. Letters from Abroad. n.d. Photo by Claude Stemmelin

​Hussein Shariffe directing his last, unfinished film, Of Dust and Rubies. Letters from Abroad. n.d. Photo by Claude Stemmelin