Madubuko Diakité

Who is Madubuko Diakité?

Madubuko A. Robinson Diakité is a US born human rights lawyer and documentary filmmaker currently residing in Sweden. He has traveled widely throughout Africa and currently free-lances as a guest lecturer and consultant on African migration, the African diaspora, human rights law, film history and mass media. In 1973, Diakité won an Honorable Mention prize for a film on youth in Harlem at the Grenoble Festival of Short films.

Diakité was born in New York City. Following his parents divorce, his mother married a Nigerian journalist and he and his three siblings spent most of their teenage years there. Encouraged by his stepfather's important role in the struggle for independence from Britain, Diakité developed his own interests in journalism and human rights. Upon returning to the New York in the 60’s he earned a law degree. Inspired by documentary filmmakers in New York at the time, he took a course in earned a Diploma in Documentary Filmmaking at the New York Institute of Photography under George Wallach. He arrived in Sweden as a foreign student in 1968 and earned a Swedish B. A. and an M.A. in film at the Department of Film Studies, Stockholm University under the guidance of Prof. Rune Waldekranz, its founder. After completing studies for a Ph.D. in film history at Stockholm U. he published the draft of his dissertation as a book entitled 'A Piece of The Glory: A Survey of African American Filmmakers and Their Struggles with Popular American Myths. After yet another stay in Nigeria, where he established the film unit at the Centre for Nigerian Cultural Studies, Ahmadu Bello University he settled in southern Sweden.