Smell The Perfume…Or When the Youth was Free in Bamako A text by Manthia Diawara on Malick Sidibé

Manthia Diawara (1953, Bamako, Mali) is a distinguished professor of comparative literature and cinema at New York University. He is the author of books on the literature and cinema of the black diaspora, including African Cinema: Politics and Culture (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1992), Black American Cinema (London: Routledge, 1993), In Search of Africa (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998), En quête d’Afrique (Paris: Présence Africaine, 2001), and We Won’t Budge: An African Exile in the World (New York: Basic Civitas, 2003). In 2001, Diawara was the curator of the exhibition Mali Kow (Parc de la Villette, Paris). He also directed the documentaries Sembène: The Making of African Cinema (1994), Rouch in Reverse (1995), Bamako Sigi-Kan—Le Pacte de Bamako (2003), An Opera of the World (2017). In 2022–23, he directed A Letter From Yene (London: Serpentine Galleries), AI, African Intelligence, and Angela Davis: A World of Greater Freedom.