Mwanzi Johns

Mwanzi Johns is an MA student at the Cinema Studies Institute. He holds a BA in Communications Studies from York University, and is an interdisciplinary scholar exploring the fields of cinema, cultural criticism, and speculative nonfiction. His research concerns the ontological and practical relationship between trauma and the absurd. Of especial interest is conceptualizing how the interplay of their temporal and affective dynamics influence notions of sovereignty, authority, and the absolute, from the scale of individual experience to political dynamics between nation-states.

Mwanzi is a second-generation immigrant, and by situating this work in the visual and literary cultures of East and Central Africa, as well as historical counterfactual, he hopes to use productive knowledge to help locate a Black post-colonial cinematic imaginary as expansive as such a space.

He is also an aspiring cat daddy, and has released comedy shorts on YouTube under a director moniker (eat your heart out, McG!).

Awards

• Continuing Student Scholarship (2023 & 2024, York University)