'This ethnic strife in Ethiopia is put in place in that period of the dogmatic generation that knew everything the left-wing dogmatic generation with good intention but without education, without knowledge, without wisdom. 'That film is really speaking about how we got to where we are now,' he says. His most recent film, 2008's Teza chronicled 30 years in the life of an Ethiopian man who lives through the country's social and political crises. His debut, Harvest: 3000 Years, dealt with an Ethiopian peasant family struggling to survive under feudalism and was produced in the midst of civil war following the overthrow of Haile Selassie's imperial rule. Ashes and Embers explored the disenchantment of returning African-American Vietnam War vets.

The struggle to survive in oppressive political climates is a common through-line of Gerima's work. It's one that he's still using now, as he works on his current projects, which include a documentary about the Italian occupation of Ethiopia, as a tribute to his father, who fought as a member of the guerrilla movement. In the canon of his work, he sees Sankofa, along with 1982's Ashes and Embers, as his turning point collectively they helped him express his cinematic accent. So you are facing all these things, and then the economic aspect of it and the technological changes. Because of the nature of cinema, and also the neglect of those films that are not part of the white supremacist kind of cultural industry. 'The wear and tear is the problem for me because I'm also trying to empower my own cinematic narrative logic, and you get very fizzled in the process to get to practice your art. It took Gerima ten years to come up with Sankofa, on the back of his previous film, Ashes and Embers. So that itself is a wear and tear of our experience.' 'You make a film, and then you rest for ten years you're resting, literally - cinematically speaking. The restoration has revived Gerima's spirits - especially in light of the disappointments and delays that come with being an independent filmmaker.

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