Jesse Gerard Mpango Mentorship Awards recipient

Jesse Gerard Mpango is a storyteller based in Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania. Jesse is a founding member of Ajabu Ajabu, a multimedia curatorial collective based in Dar Es Salaam. Ajabu Ajabu employs participatory, open-ended approaches in its programming and events as a way of exploring de-centralized and communal forms of presentation, production, and preservation of audio-visual work in Tanzania. Recurrent within his work as part of Ajabu Ajabu, and as an independent practitioner, is the capacity for participatory rituals of imagining to unsettle and dislocate dominant narratives and extractive power structures. 

Some of Jesse’s recent projects include Manifested Belonging, a multidisciplinary examination of formal and aesthetic contributions of Dar Es Salaam’s screen communities, and a component work, the award-winning documentary short Apostles Of Cinema.