Petna Katondolo is a Congolese filmmaker, educator, and ancestral ecologist whose artistic works are acclaimed for their decolonial African futurism. For Petna, questions of sovereignty and narrative control have been at the heart of his work as a filmmaker, educator, and community organizer for several decades. Starting with the philosophy, practices, and experiences developed at Yole!Africa, the cultural center that he founded in 2000, Petna's keynote will expand into a broader conversation about what sovereignty truly means in a world shaped by extraction, displacement, technological transformation, and the ongoing struggle for communities to tell their own stories.
Biographies (submitted by the speakers):
Petna Ndaliko Katondolo (Mwalimu) is an acclaimed Congolese filmmaker, ancestral ecologist, and educator working at the intersection of land, memory, and narrative sovereignty. He is the founder of Yole!Africa in Goma, DR Congo, and a leading voice within the Basandja Coalition, advancing Indigenous and grassroots stewardship across the Congo Basin. His cinematic practice, Soul-full Soil Cinema, approaches film as a form of listening to land, community, and history. His internationally awarded work engages questions of extraction, technology, and power from grounded indigenous realities. Petna developed AgroLiberation, linking food, culture, and cooperative economies with displaced and local communities. He has held three filmmaker-in-residence appointments in the UC Irvine Film & Media Studies Department. He is a co-founder of the Alec Glasser Center for the Power of Music and Social Change at UC Irvine.
Petna Katondolo is a Congolese filmmaker, educator, and ancestral ecologist whose artistic works are acclaimed for their decolonial African futurism. For Petna, questions of sovereignty and narrative control have been at the heart of his work as a filmmaker, educator, and community organizer for several decades. Starting with the philosophy, practices, and experiences developed at Yole!Africa, the cultural center that he founded in 2000, Petna's keynote will expand into a broader conversation about what sovereignty truly means in a world shaped by extraction, displacement, technological transformation, and the ongoing struggle for communities to tell their own stories.
Biographies (submitted by the speakers):
Petna Ndaliko Katondolo (Mwalimu) is an acclaimed Congolese filmmaker, ancestral ecologist, and educator working at the intersection of land, memory, and narrative sovereignty. He is the founder of Yole!Africa in Goma, DR Congo, and a leading voice within the Basandja Coalition, advancing Indigenous and grassroots stewardship across the Congo Basin. His cinematic practice, Soul-full Soil Cinema, approaches film as a form of listening to land, community, and history. His internationally awarded work engages questions of extraction, technology, and power from grounded indigenous realities. Petna developed AgroLiberation, linking food, culture, and cooperative economies with displaced and local communities. He has held three filmmaker-in-residence appointments in the UC Irvine Film & Media Studies Department. He is a co-founder of the Alec Glasser Center for the Power of Music and Social Change at UC Irvine.
