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STATUS, STASIS AND STEREOTYPES: THE NEW YORK AFRICAN FILM FESTIVAL BRINGS STORY TO THE FORE |
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By Culturekiosque Staff NEW YORK, 6 APRIL 2009 - The filmmakers represented in the 16th Annual New York African Film Festival (NYAFF) stand ready to shatter audience expectations, presenting stories that embrace and explore the human, not the African, condition - making this year's festival not so much international as supranational. With screenings at venues in Manhattan and Brooklyn from 8 April through 25 May, the popular event presents a lineup of 35 films from 16 countries throughout Africa and the African Diaspora. This year's festival marks the 15th anniversary of South Africa's independence and comes just days before voters there head to the polls to select a leader for the fourth time since the end of apartheid; April's elections will be closely watched as they may be a political sea change for the country, with broad international implications.
Opening night brings the U.S. premiere of Jihan El-Tahri's Behind the Rainbow on Wednesday, 8 April. In the film, El-Tahri, best known for her Emmy nominated documentary, The House of Saud, and for Cuba: An African Odyssey, probes the history of the governing African National Congress (ANC) party, from Mandela's release from prison to the election of Jacob Zuma as the party's new leader. In addition to El-Tahri's Behind the Rainbow and Ralph Ziman's Jerusalema, a tale about a self-made Sowetan entrepreneur, 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.
Three up-and-coming female Kenyan filmmakers have films in the Festival. 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 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 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.
Important cultural legacies, bio-pics, international boxing, war-time rape, and coming-of-age stories are among the other themes treated during the festival. For example, Yandé Codou, The Griot of Senghor is an intimate look at the life of singer/diva Yandé Codou Sène who has gone through the history of Senegal at the side of one of its greatest mythical figures, President/poet Léopold Sédar Senghor. Presented by African Film Festival, Inc. (AFF) and The Film Society of Lincoln Center (FSLC), the 16th annual NYAFF runs at The Film Society of Lincoln Center 8 through 14 April, continues with a panel discussion at Columbia University's Institute of African Studies on 15 April, and wraps up at the Brooklyn Academy of Music's BAMcinématek from 22 through 25 May.
PROGRAMME NOTES AND FILM SYNOPSES
Behind the Rainbow (U.S. Premiere) Behind the Rainbow explores the transition of the ANC from a liberation organization into South Africa 's ruling party through the evolution of the relationship between two of its most prominent cadres, Thabo Mbeki and Jacob Zuma. Exiled under apartheid, they were brothers in arms. Under Mandela they loyally labored to build a non-racial state. Now they are bitter rivals. Their duel threatens to tear apart the ANC and the country, as the poor desperately seek hope in change, and the elite fight for the spoils of victory. Behind the Rainbow features key interviews with ANC current and former leaders, including Jacob Zuma, Thabo Mbeki, Kgalema Motlanthe, Pallo Jordan, and Terror Lekota.
The Fighting Spirit (U.S. Premiere) One town in Africa takes on the world as three boxers - two men and a woman - from a poor slum in Ghana fight their way to the glittering rings of New York and London for the biggest prizes in the business. Thanks to tenacious coaches who turn rough street fighters into money-churning professional boxers, the village has produced several champions and is looking for its next big winner. Twenty-two-year-old George is excited to box overseas for the first time. Known as "The First Lady of Boxing," Yarkor is struggling to win her first big fight. Having already achieved international success, Joshua is campaigning for the world welterweight title.
Siki, Ring Wrestler (U.S. Premiere) Senegalese boxing legend Battling Siki, a World War I hero and the first African to win a world championship, fascinated and intrigued many in his short life; he was 28 years old when he was murdered in New York City in 1925. This short film is a story of his most famous fight and the saga of the excavation of his remains, buried for 67 years in a Queens cemetery. "No man ever came out of Africa who had a more dramatic life or had a more tragic ending," said Rev. Adam Clayton Powell at Siki's funeral.
Congo My Foot Tino La Musica, a Congolese band whose members are all refugees based in Cape Town, play at their regular weekly gig at Club La Reference on Long Street. They live and rehearse in a rundown block of flats in the inner city suburb Gardens. Their mood ishopeful, until they are evicted a week before the countrywide xenophobic violence that would scatter and displace approximately 30,000 refugees around the country. The double impact of these events causes the band to fall apart, and the film follows their struggle to get together again as they search for new instruments and the will to sing and dance.
Martine and Thandeka Already a refugee in South Africa after the war broke out in her home country, the Democratic Republic of the Congo , Martine and her two children were living with family when the xenophobic violence took place. She fled with her family to a police station, where her 15-year-old daughter was sexually assaulted. Zimbabwean Thandeka is married to a South African man, with whom she has two children. She, too, was caught up in the furor and ended up at a police station. Both women are sent to the Rifle Range refugee camp with no knowledge about their futures, where they share their stories of vulnerability during very trying times.
The Burning Man - Ernesto Alfabeto
Nhamuave This gentle exploration by Nigerian filmmaker Adze Ugah tries to recapture the individuality of Ernesto Alfabeto Nhamuave and understand the events that led to his being burnt to death in South Africa in 2008. Ugah travels to Nhamuave's village in Mozambique to meet his family and the people whom he loved, exploring the underlying curse of poverty and the fragile chords of humanity and dignity that defined the person now known the world over as The Burning Man.
Baraka Two days after South Africa experienced violent attacks against its black foreign nationals, thousands of people were displaced into temporary shelters across the country. After the attacks, the Western Cape community of Masiphumelele went to the nearby Soetwater refugee camp to publicly apologize, inviting their foreign nationals back home. This film follows the return of foreign storeowners to the overcrowded community. As they rebuild their destroyed shops, the area struggles to resolve the root causes of the conflict.
From A Whisper (U.S. Premiere) 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. This film is not about the bombing but rather its aftermath on the lives of the indirect victims of the blast who were forced to learn how to live past a tragedy that shattered their lives. From a Whisper also follows an artiste and an intelligence officer, direct victims of the terrorist attack, who find unique ways to survive the tragedy. Wanuri Kahiu presents the Kenyan perspective in this close look at the real struggle and worn-out consciences that come when despair turns into obsession and sorrow turns into denial.
The Importance of Being Elegant This is the story of one of the most unusual clubs in the world, the Société des Ambianceurs et Persons Élégants-La SAPE-whose members, the Sapeurs, come from the Democratic Republic of Congo and have elevated fashion to the status of a religion. Translated into English, the name refers to a society of people who spend huge amounts of money on designer clothes with the motive of making themselves as conspicuously elegant as possible. One of these ultimate fashion victims is well-known Congolese singer Papa Wemba. The film is a splendid evocation of Papa Wemba's music and an unusual insight into what it means to be an immigrant in contemporary Europe.
In My Genes (N.Y. Premiere) What is it like to be white in a black society? In My Genes presents an intimate introduction to albinism as Agnes overcomes the odds of being born with no pigment in a community that discriminates against the condition. In this documentary about disability, minority discrimination, identity, issues of representation, confidence, and the perception of the other, she discovers she has skin cancer and finds out the real reason why she lost both of her eyes. Yet Agnes keeps going, trusting in the work of her hands and the strength of her god. In interviews cut into her narrative, seven other individuals share their experiences of living with albinism. They ponder the effect of their condition on their childhoods, adolescence, sexuality, race, and dreams.
Jerusalema (N.Y. Premiere) All Lucky Kunene ever wanted was a BMW seven series and a house with a sea view. But since he was born into a poor family in Soweto in the dying years of apartheid, the odds are stacked against him and his generation, for whom battling the police is a badge of honor and doing time is an everyday reality. When he falls under the spell of Nazareth Mbolelo, a Russian-trained, ex-ANC soldier with a vendetta against the old regime, Kunene and his best friend Zakes are plucked from the nursery of petty crime and roped into armed robbery. This stylized, energized crime story ponders the nature of justice and the virtues of vigilantism. "If you're going to steal...Steal big, and hope like hell you get away with it!" Jerusalema is the tale of a self-made Sowetan entrepreneur, climbing the Hillbrow criminal underworld ladder one rung at a time.
Killer Necklace (U.S. Premiere) Boo is a handsome young banker with a bright future, and Wai is a sultry young girl from a privileged background. Boo would do anything for Wai, so deep is his desire for her. Wai, far more the material girl, has her eye on a different prize: the most beautiful golden necklace in the world. In this twisted tale of desire and deceit, is anybody what they appear to be and does anyone truly mean what they say?
Area Boys ( U.S. Premiere) Having grown up in a world where corruption and greed rule, lifelong friends Bode and Obi encounter a near death experience following a botched scam and decide to repent from their way of life. They cut their ties with their megalomaniacal boss Dele and his domineering girlfriend (who has a soft spot for Bode), but life as good citizens proves difficult. They plan one more job behind Dele's back, to raise the funds that would ease them into a lifestyle of godliness, but they are soon faced with a life-or-death situation and must search for an escape route from the clutches of Dele's henchmen.
Kinshasa Palace (N.Y. Premiere) Kinshasa Palace is a study of family displacement and the socially corrosive ramifications of the recent African Diaspora. The Laplaine family is scattered around Europe and Africa as refugees from the wars in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Kaze and younger brother Max live in Paris, though recently Max has gone missing and the family is beginning to worry. Somewhere between documentary and fiction - the film is based on, and uses, the filmmaker's own family - Kinshasa Palace speaks volumes about the legacy of an unstable Africa on the micro level.
Paris or Nothing / Paris A Tout Prix Determined 24-year-old Suzy will do anything to leave her native Cameroon to go to Paris . But the journey is fraught with risks, and after all kinds of ordeals, she reaches Paris to find out that it is not the paradise about which she dreamt. This film finds a very effective way of tackling with contemporary issues linked to immigration and is a very powerful portrait of a young woman whose dreams and false hopes are shared by too many young people today.
The Prodigal Son (U.S. Premiere) Kurt Orderson, a Rastafarian and filmmaker from Cape Town, South Africa, retraces his great-grandfather Joseph Orderson's epic journey to South Africa from Barbados in the 1890s. Orderson was part of the Universal Negro Improvement Association, founded by the great Marcus Garvey, father of contemporary Black Nationalism and Pan Africanism.
Bronx Princess Bronx Princess follows headstrong 17-year-old Rocky's journey as she leaves behind her mother in New York City to reunite with her father, a chief in Ghana . Filmed during her tumultuous summer between high school and college, Rocky's coming-of-age story confronts her immigrant parents' ideas of adulthood, as she reconciles her African heritage with her dream of independence. AND
African Booty Scratcher African Booty Scratcher is an immigrant coming-of-age tale that captures one fashionable, New York teenager's choice between family tradition and social conformity while selecting her prom dress. It is a crisp and fresh storytelling showcase about young Africans living in the Diaspora
Sacred Places / Leux Saints ( U.S.
Premiere) Through the lives of Bouba, the video club operator, and Jules Cesar, the djembe maker and player who sees the djembe, a skin-covered hand drum, as the big brother of cinema, Jean-Marie Téno turns the portrait of the Ouagadougou neighborhood of St. Leon into an introspection on his craft as a filmmaker, as well as a personal reflection on art, popular culture, and business in Africa today.
Sex, Okra and Salted Butter / Sexe, Gombo et Buerre
Sale Mahamat Saleh Haroun reveals an incredible sense of humor in this comedy that takes a serious shot at black life in Paris from several angles. The director of Daratt and Sotigui Kouyate: A Modern Griot introduces us to Hortense, a 40-year-old nurse originally from Cameroon . Her extramarital affair leads to a separation from her very traditional African husband, Malik, who is in for a ride as he learns more about Hortense's love affair, his eldest son's secret homosexual love life, and the responsibilities of a single parent raising two black kids in Paris. Many of Haroun's signature preoccupations are in full flower - absent parents, revenge versus reconciliation - all seen through a lucid visual style that gives this sharp-edged comedy of manners plenty of space to breathe onscreen.
Triomf (U.S. Premiere) The vibrant Johannesburg suburb of Sophiatown was bulldozed in the 1960s and all its black inhabitants were forcibly removed. In its place a new housing estate named Triomf was built for poor whites. Fast-forward to April 1994 and the first democratic general elections in the history of South Africa . Apartheid is about to end. Lambert Benade will turn 21, and Uncle Treppie has promised him the girl of his dreams. But in this hilarious tragicomedy, as a new world is born, two members of the poor white family are destined to die.
Wrestling Grounds / L'Appel des Arenes Cheick Ndiaye's first feature-length film is an excellent adaptation of the brilliant Senegalese writer Aminata Sow Fall's bestseller. Shamans and punching bags are the cornerstones of 17-year-old Nalla's training in this colorful foray into the world of Senegalese wrestling, a traditional art that has become a national phenomenon. When Nalla joins a champion team, he learns there's a spiritual aspect to the sport, one that goes beyond the muscles, money, and the ladies. Cheikh Ndiaye's engaging film twists the familiar images of Africa , cutting from nightclubs to ancestral ceremonies to streets where boom boxes play and athletes in traditional dress and sneakers dance their way to victory.
Yandé Codou, The Griot of Senghor / Yandé Codou, la
Griotte de Senghor (U.S. Premiere) The singer Yandé Codou Sène is one of the last of purveyors of polyphonic Sérère poetry. This film is an intimate look at a diva who has gone through the history of Senegal at the side of one of its greatest mythical figures, president/poet Léopold Sédar Senghor.
Nora Nora is based on the true stories of dancer Nora Chipaumire, born in Zimbabwe in 1965. As she returns to the landscape of her childhood and takes a journey through vivid memories of her youth, she brings her history to life through performance, dance, sound, and image. The result is a film about family dramas, difficult love affairs, and militant politics that moves between the comic and the tragic, the joyful and the mournful. Nora features a multitude of local performers and dancers of all ages, from young schoolchildren to ancient grandmothers. Much of the music is specially composed by Zimbabwean music legend Thomas Mapfumo. AND
Coming of Age ( U.S. Premiere) This exploration of democracy as seen through the eyes of a girl growing up in Kenya features reenacted drama and archival footage, seamlessly strung together to take us on a narrated journey from the past into present day. The Kenyatta era - when Jomo Kenyatta served as the first prime minister and president of Kenya - with its naive post-independence euphoria, is reflected in the innocence of the young girl's outlook. Daniel arap Moi's oppressive regime is depicted in teenage turmoil. And in 2002, a more mature narrator comes of age alongside a nation, as Kenya ushers in a third president, Mwai Kibaki. After the disputed election results of December 2007, we are left to wonder if democracy ever truly comes of age.
Title image: Kinshasa Palace Related Culturekiosque Archives Dying Darfur: Sudan Genocide Subject of New DVD, Book The Curious Thing about George, Obama's Half-Brother Barack Obama: The New Caesar Africanus? Or, What the hell is Chris Matthews Talking About? Mirella Ricciardi: Pictures of the People of Kenya and Sudan KUSH: Black Africa's Earliest Civilization KOUSH: Première civilisation d'Afrique noire (en français) Gold Processing Center Discovered in the Ancient Kingdom of Kush Brooklyn Museum and Egyptian Government Announce Discovery of Gilded Lintel African Masks: 'Magical Faces of Africa' The Ancient Nubian City of Kerma, 2500-1500 B.C. FreeRice.com: Hungry Minds Feed Hungry Mouths Magic: Power Objects of the Peoples and Kings of Africa. Magies: Objets de Pouvoir des Peuples et des Rois d'Afrique (en français) |
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