SAIS-CARI is pleased to present a film screening and discussion of the documentary "TAZARA Stories".

TAZARA Stories tells the story of a train through the memories of those who built it. Set in Tanzania, Zambia and China, the film interweaves oral and visual narratives of workers from three nations who found themselves laboring side by side in a massive infrastructure project at the height of the Cold War. Remembering and reliving their youth, the workers take us on a journey in time from the exhilaration of construction through disappointments and derailments to their own hopeful resilience in the face of enduring change.

The screening will be followed by a discussion and Q&A session with film producer Prof. Jamie Monson, moderated by Prof. Yoon Jung Park, Associate Director of the China Africa Research Initiative.

Prof. Jamie Monson is a historian of the TAZARA railway, the development project built in Tanzania and Zambia in the 1970s that is the subject of this film. She has been working on “TAZARA Stories” since 2010 in conjunction with a companion book and digital archive project. Her earlier book on TAZARA, "Africa’s Freedom Railway: How a Chinese Development Project Changed Lives and Livelihoods in Tanzania" (Indiana University Press, 2009) has been widely acclaimed and has been recently published in Chinese (2015). Jamie Monson is Director of African Studies and Professor of History at Michigan State University. She has been carrying out research in Tanzania, Zambia and China since the 1990s.