Hello Wikimedians,
Here's to introduce you to a new WikiProject called "The AfroCine Project".
It is a project designed to be a multi-country, multi-faceted project which aims to
encourage the contribution of content that relates to the historical and contemporary
cinema, theatre, and arts sectors of several African countries, the Caribbean and the
diaspora to Wikimedia projects.
The Entertainment Industry in Africa is huge; However, all of these very active film
industries are poorly represented on Wikipedia and its sister projects, as the available
information about them is very scanty and difficult to access. The AfroCine Project aims
to fix this problem. It is designed to use cinema and arts to help bridge the huge African
content gap on Wikipedia and other Wikimedia/Open projects, as well as to improve on the
awareness of these projects and the overall movement in African countries.
Focus will include variety of interests, such as: Contemporary and historical cinema
articles, biographies of relevant personalities (especially women), film articles, images
of relevant subjects and personalities, etc. This will be achieved through varying
methods, such as edit-a-thons, workshops, GLAMs, writing/upload contests, and so on; using
the help of existing communities and affiliates across Africa and beyond.
In the month of October and November, there will be a series of contests which has been
tagged "Months of African Cinema". For these months, communities, groups, and
organizations are welcome to organize local events for this contest. Focus would be on
writing, translations and image uploads. More information would be communicated, as time
goes on; in the meantime, please sign up on the project meta page, if you're already
involved with African cinema projects, or you're interested in getting involved; here:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/The_AfroCine_Project
Also kindly share this information with your local communities.
Thank you!
Sam Oyeyele.