Florence Ayisi

Florence Ayisi was born in Kumba in Cameroon in 1962 (although 1964 is also cited). She is an academic and filmmaker. Her film Sisters in Law won more than 27 awards (including the Prix Art et Essai at the Cannes Film Festival in 2005 and a Peabody Award) and was short-listed for an Academy Award nomination in 2006. She won the UK Film Council Breakthrough Brits Award for Film Talent in 2008. Since 2000 she has taught film at the University of South Wales.

Ayisi founded the production company Iris Films in 2005. In 2007 she was recognised with a meeting with the Queen for her work's link with Commonwealth countries.

Marsha Meskimmon and Dorothy C. Rowe write that "Ayisi's nuanced portraits of the lives of contemporary African women reject simplistic stereotypes and suggest that gender politics in a global world may not divide easily along the lines of nation-states, 'East' and 'West', or 'developed' and ‘developing'." In a 2012 article Olivier Jean TchOuaffé said "Kim Longinotto and Florence Ayisi, in their film Sister-in-Law, stand out for the originality with which they portray the figure of the judge within a post-colonial context of insecurity, as they highlight two strong women as the faces of security and judicial stability" p196. Another review describes the film as "a well-crafted, focused film that really says something about a small, manageable aspect of another culture and the people who shape it." A review in Black Camera describes Sisters in law as "a film that universalises experience without co-opting it."

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