Description: A Blog on the Reading, Writing, and Theory of Movies, Television, and Social Media
One of my favorite things to do every year in New York is attend its African Film Festival ( the NYAFF ). I have written about it a couple times before in this blog [ here ] and my other blog [ here ]. The festival has always had a Pan-African spirit, so it includes black films from across the world, not only filmmakers living in Africa, but also the African Diaspora in the Caribbean, North and South America, and Europe. Often, the films are followed by 30-minutes of Q&A time with the director and/or some o
If you’re unfamiliar with the structure of the NYAFF, there are actually three parts, the first part is the premier of mostly new films at Lincoln Center which hosts the filmmakers and includes the Q&A time and parties, etc. The second part is a focus on documentary at the Maysles Cinema in Harlem, and the third part at the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) coincides with the African dance festival, and this part repeats some of the films from the previous year along with other films of interest, some old, so
The new movies that I saw at Lincoln Center were Freda (directed by Gessica Généus, Haiti), Vuta K’Kuvute/Tug of War (directed by Amil Shivji, Tanzania), Abderrahmane Sissako, un cinéaste a l’Opéra (directed by Charles Castella, France), and Ayaanle (directed by Ahmed Farah, Somalia and Kenya). In addition to these new films, I also saw an old film made in 1982: Jom, the Story of a People (directed by Ababacar Samb-Makharam, Senegal.) I also attended a seminar with the Ethiopian filmmaker Haile Gerima and a