This annual film festival–I volunteer for its public programs–is back for its 16th edition next month (8 April till 15 April and also in May (22 May till May 25).
Highlights (from the festival’s PR):
15 Years into South Africa’s Democracy
Many films in this year’s New York African Film Festival speak to South Africa’s changing tides. In addition to [Jihan] El-Tahri’s Behind the Rainbow and [Ralph] Ziman’s Jerusalema, Triomf, by veteran-director Michael Raeburn, also shines a light on the challenges facing the country post-apartheid; Raeburn’s film depicts the plight of South Africa’s white poor on the eve of the first democratic elections in April 1994. Young filmmaker Kurt Orderson, who would have been classified as Coloured (or mixed-race), presents his own story in Prodigal Son, and reflects on the hodgepodge that is South African identity. Rounding out the focus on South Africa is the artists collective, Filmmakers Against Racism, which produced a series of short films in response to the xenophobic incidents that rocked South Africa in 2008.
New Generation of Emerging Filmmakers
Three up-and-coming female Kenyan filmmakers have films in the Festival that question identity and politics in 21st Century Africa. Lupita Nyong’o in her film In My Genes boldly challenges the stigma surrounding albinism in Africa; Judy Kibinge in Coming of Age tells the story of a young Kenyan girl’s disquieting realization of national politics in the 1970s; and Wanuri Kahiu’s From a Whisper commemorates the tenth anniversary of the August 1998 terrorist bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi, Kenya, in which more than 250 people died and more than 5,000 were injured. Meanwhile, the 21st century reality of young African asylum seekers within Europe and Africa is explored in Omelihu Nwanguma’s Area Boys, Jose Laplaine’s Le Clandestin and Josephine Ndagnou’s Paris or Nothing / Paris A Tout Prix.
Veteran filmmakers
Jean-Marie Téno, Africa’s preeminent documentary filmmaker, and Mahamat Saleh Haroun, whose 2006′s Daratt won the Grand Special Jury Prize at the 63rd Venice International Film Festival, are back with films that question the purpose and direction of African filmmaking. With Sacred Places, Téno designates the drum as the big brother of cinema and asks African filmmakers who their audience is—and who it should be. Haroun surprises us with a comedy in Sex, Okra and Salted Butter. It is a film made in the Diaspora, about Africans in the Diaspora, suggesting that the African village can be recreated anywhere. These films challenge African filmmakers to ask themselves what their roles and responsibilities are to the continent, and whether an African audience should be the focus.
Coming-of-age tales
Wrestling Grounds (L’Appel Des Arenes), From a Whisper, African Booty Scratcher, Kinshasa Palace, Bronx Princess and Nora all follow young people, who reclaim cultural legacies and histories to create opportunities for themselves. Historically rich in content, Yandé Codou, The Griot of Senghor and Siki, Ring Wrestler expand on this idea, all exploring the lives of well-known individuals who have walked the path of rediscovery and found value in the journey that would later influence many generations to come. Singer Yandé Codou Sène is one of the last of purveyors of polyphonic Sérère poetry, and Yandé Codou, The Griot of Senghor is an intimate look at this diva, who has gone through the history of Senegal at the side of one of its greatest mythical figures, President/poet Léopold Sédar Senghor. The film is a bittersweet story about greatness, glory and the passage of time.
Transformative Power of Sports
Wrestling Grounds (L’Appel Des Arenes) and The Fighting Spirit join Siki, Ring Wrestler as films that capture the transformative power of sports.
Columbia University’s Institute of African Studies
Film Screening and Panel Discussion A feature-length film will be shown from 12:00 p.m. to 2:00 p.m., followed by two shorts from 3:00 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. The day will conclude with “Beyond the Rainbow: 15 Years into South Africa’s Democracy,” a panel discussion hosted by Professor Mamadou Diouf, the Institute’s director. The event, which will take place from 6:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m., will examine the idea of nationhood in post-Apartheid South Africa. With the upcoming elections of National Assembly it is fitting to review the shifts in identification that have taken place over the last 15 years and consider the various ways in which South Africans currently envision themselves and their relationship to both the rest of the continent and the rest of the international community.
The films will be screened at three venues across the city: the Film Society of Lincoln Center in Manhattan (April 8 till 14 April), Columbia University in Harlem (15 April) and BAM in Brooklyn (22 May till May 25).
Makes me want to be a NewYorker for a month!