Uploaded January 2026 | Updated September 2026, 14 minutes ago
Ejo-Lobi Storytelling: Ritualization Through Image and Movement with Petna Ndaliko Katondolo
July 20, 2025 at LACMA's Smidt Welcome Plaza
Filmmaker, educator, and ancestral ecologist Petna Ndaliko Katondolo curates possibilities of remembering - a program of ritualization through storytelling, films from Congo made in collaboration with the unseen and the silenced. They ask: what if the earth remembers more than we do? And what if that memory is our only chance at a future worth living?
After the short films, Petna will be in conversation with Assistant Curator of Film Matazi Weathers about engaging with Black movement as an archive of stories, creating spaces curated specially for Black energy, the possibilities of remembering, and ritualization through storytelling.
This program is the first of a two part series in connection with Imagining Black Diasporas that presents video works, in-person discussions, and somatic participations to tap into the contemporary resonances of the Black diaspora.
Co-presented by the William Grant Still Arts Center
Bio:
Petna Ndaliko Katondolo is an internationally acclaimed Congolese filmmaker, ancestral ecologist, and educator known for his critical engagement, intellectual rigor, and Soul-full Soil cinema technique. A leading figure in the Recoding Aesthetic movement, Ndaliko draws a bold cinematic language that fuses rhythm, imagery, and social critique—using Africafuturistic vocabulary to challenge colonial legacies and reimagine the very structure of storytelling. His films offer new knowledge systems while provoking deep reflection on the normalization of violence and the enduring scars of colonial logic.
Through works that honor memory and interrogate dominant narrative forms, Ndaliko continues to center local agency and lived realities. His latest triptych film series—Katasumbika, Ndjimu, and Mikuba—was filmed in the Katanga region. Mikuba re-centers indigenous justice to regulate mining in southeastern DR Congo, exemplifying his enduring commitment to social transformation through art.
Ejo-Lobi Storytelling: Ritualization Through Image and Movement with Petna Ndaliko Katondolo
July 20, 2025 at LACMA's Smidt Welcome Plaza
Filmmaker, educator, and ancestral ecologist Petna Ndaliko Katondolo curates possibilities of remembering - a program of ritualization through storytelling, films from Congo made in collaboration with the unseen and the silenced. They ask: what if the earth remembers more than we do? And what if that memory is our only chance at a future worth living?
After the short films, Petna will be in conversation with Assistant Curator of Film Matazi Weathers about engaging with Black movement as an archive of stories, creating spaces curated specially for Black energy, the possibilities of remembering, and ritualization through storytelling.
This program is the first of a two part series in connection with Imagining Black Diasporas that presents video works, in-person discussions, and somatic participations to tap into the contemporary resonances of the Black diaspora.
Co-presented by the William Grant Still Arts Center
Bio:
Petna Ndaliko Katondolo is an internationally acclaimed Congolese filmmaker, ancestral ecologist, and educator known for his critical engagement, intellectual rigor, and Soul-full Soil cinema technique. A leading figure in the Recoding Aesthetic movement, Ndaliko draws a bold cinematic language that fuses rhythm, imagery, and social critique—using Africafuturistic vocabulary to challenge colonial legacies and reimagine the very structure of storytelling. His films offer new knowledge systems while provoking deep reflection on the normalization of violence and the enduring scars of colonial logic.
Through works that honor memory and interrogate dominant narrative forms, Ndaliko continues to center local agency and lived realities. His latest triptych film series—Katasumbika, Ndjimu, and Mikuba—was filmed in the Katanga region. Mikuba re-centers indigenous justice to regulate mining in southeastern DR Congo, exemplifying his enduring commitment to social transformation through art.
