CAMBRIDGE AFRICAN FILM FESTIVAL
The 6th Cambridge African Film Festival brings a wide range of feature films, documentaries and shorts, from regions ranging from Chad to South Africa, Cameroon to Zanzibar. This year’s films are themed around issues of gender, exile, migration, arts and politics, offering thoughtful film-making on topical African and diasporic concerns. There will be events at New Hall, University of Cambridge on 2 and 3 November, focusing on the theme of women in African cinema. Visit www.newhall.cam.ac.uk/events/#Film for more information. Admission free – all welcome.
SUNDAY 4 NOVEMBER, 5.00
FARO: GODDESS OF THE WATERS (15)
Director: Salif Traore. France/Mali 2006. 96 mins. Zanga, a child born out of wedlock, is driven out of his village. After many years, he returns to find out who his father is. A dramatic event upon his arrival leads the villagers to think that the female sprit of the river, Faro, is displeased. The film uses this fateful moment in the history of a small village to explore the dynamic between tradition and modernity in rural Africa.
FRIDAY 9 NOVEMBER,5.00
SATURDAY 10 NOVEMBER, 3.00
SUNDAY 11 NOVEMBER, 3.00
(Film TBC)
SATURDAY 17 NOVEMBER, 3.00
OUR WORLD IN ZANZIBAR (15)
BLACK GOLD (U)
14
Directors: Nick and Mark Francis. UK 2006. 78 mins. Multinational coffee companies now rule our shopping malls and supermarkets and dominate the industry worth over $80 billion, making coffee the most valuable trading commodity in the world after oil. Nowhere is this more evident than in Ethiopia, the birthplace of coffee. Tadesse Meskela is one man on a mission to save his 74,000 struggling coffee farmers from bankruptcy. Tadesse travels the world in an attempt to find buyers willing to pay a fair price, and against the backdrop of Tadesse’s journey to London and Seattle, the enormous power of the multinational players that dominate the world’s coffee trade becomes apparent.
Director: Florence Ayisi. Tanzania 2007. 35 mins. OUR WORLD IN ZANZIBAR is about ‘Reverse Migration’: women migrating from richer countries to Africa, a continent consistently portrayed as a place of perpetual poverty, hopelessness, corruption and so on. Why did these women leave their comfortable lifestyles in the West? The film is a thought-provoking exposé and includes personal accounts of migration from foreign women who live in Zanzibar.
★ We are pleased to welcome Director Florence Ayisi to a Q&A.
TESTAMENT (15)
Director: John Akomfrah. Ghana/UK 1988. 80 mins. To celebrate the 50th anniversary of Ghanian independence, CAFF is proud to present a look back into Ghana’s history. TESTAMENT tells the story of an African minister who flees to England when her government is overthrown. Twenty years later she returns to find out what went wrong. This film is a poetic portrait of exile and dispossession.
★ We hope to welcome Director John Akomfrah to a Q&A. FRIDAY 16 NOVEMBER, 5.00
MANY WORDS FOR MODERN (15)
Director: Jorden Hollander. Holland/Tanzania 2007. 60 mins. Directors: Ed Scott, Ruby Ofori. US/Eritrea 2005. 52 mins. These two films each examine the architecture of an East African capital – one looks at the architecture of Dar es Salaam in Tanzanian, the other focuses on the Eritrean capital, Asmara. From the Italian Art Deco of the 1930s, to modern Swahili architecture and the architectural legacy of colonial racial policies, these two films offer intriguing insights into ‘building’ the nation.
★ We are pleased to welcome Director Jorden Hollander to the screening and to a Q&A afterwards.
CITY OF DREAMS (15)
JUJU FACTORY (15)
Director: Balufu Bakupa-Kanyinda. France/ Democratic Republic of the Congo 2006. 97 mins. Living in Matonge, the African district of Brussels, Kongo is commissioned to write a book on the Congolese community. How should he represent his African home? Can he find his “Juju”, his self-confidence, to write his own story? This film is a journey through the ghosts and histories that haunt the exile’s precarious in-between identity. Winner of the Golden Dhow at the 2007 Zanzibar International Film Festival.
TENGERS (15)
Director: Mike Rix. South Africa 2007. 70 mins. South Africa’s first-ever animated film, TENGERS is a dark urban social satire. It follows the story of an out-of-work novelist struggling to write the ‘great South African novel’. After winning a lottery ticket, he realizes someone is trying to kill him. A chase ensues which ends with a Westernstyle showdown outside a bank. Featuring clay figures, TENGERS is a study of crime, race and class in contemporary South Africa.
SATURDAY 17 NOVEMBER, 5.00
SUNDAY 18 NOVEMBER, 3.00
SATURDAY 24 NOVEMBER, 3.00
(Film TBC)
SUNDAY 25 NOVEMBER, 3.00
DARATT (15)
Director: Mahamet Saleh Haroun. Chad/France/ Belgium 2006. 96 mins. This stark study of obsession tracks the outcomes of an amnesty declared on all crimes committed during the civil war in Chad. A young man whose father was murdered during the war tracks down his father’s killer, only to be offered a job by him. Haroun follows the building tension between the two men, and the younger man’s struggle to keep hidden his knowledge of the killer’s identity. The film was commissioned for acclaimed theater director Peter Sellars’ multimedia New Crowned Hope festival celebrating the 250th anniversary of the birth of Mozart.
★ We are pleased to welcome Director Mahamet Saleh Haroun to the screening and to a Q&A afterwards.
AS OLD AS MY TONGUE: THE MYTH AND LIFE OF BI KIDUDE (15)
CEDDO (15)
Director: Andy Jones. UK/Zanzibar. 92 mins. An intimate portrait of Swahili musical legend, Bi Kidude, probably the oldest performer on the stage today. Bi Kidude wins friends wherever she travels, but at home in Zanzibar she continually courts controversy, her behavior challenging perceptions of the role of women in Muslim society.
★ We hope to welcome Director Andy Jones to a Q&A. FRIDAY 23 NOVEMBER, 5.00
WHO’S AFRAID OF NGUGI? (15)
Director: Ousmane Sembene. Senegal 1976. 120 mins. The Ceddo try to preserve their African culture against the onslaught of Islam, Christianity and the slave trade. When King Demba War sides with the Muslims, the Ceddo kidnap his daughter, the princess, to protest their forcible conversion to Islam. After trying to rescue the princess various heirs to the throne are killed, and the King is murdered during the night. Eventually the kidnappers are killed and the princess is brought back to the village to confront the Imam, as all the villagers are being given Muslim names.
★ The screening will be followed by a round-table discussion of Ousmane Sembene’s legacy with Professor Manthia Diawara of New York University and Dr Lindiwe Dovey of The School of Oriental and African Studies.
RETURN TO GOREE (15)
Director: Pierre-Yves Borgeaud. Switzerland 2007. 112 mins. This musical road movie tells of Senegalese singer Youssou N’Dour’s epic journey along the slave route and the jazz music that was created along the way. The challenge N’Dour sets for himself is to perform a selection of jazz on the island of Goree, the symbolic heart of the slave trade that today stands in commemoration to all of slavery’s victims. Accompanied by a talented range of musicians, N’Dour travels across the US and Europe, attempting to create music that transcends cultural divisions.
Director: Manthia Diawara. Mali 2006. 83 mins. New York University Professor, Diawara, documents the return of Kenyan novelist and activist Ngugi wa Thiong’o to his homeland after a 22-year exile. However, the film takes on new meaning when this homecoming is cut short by a brutal attack.
★ We are pleased to welcome Director Manthia Diawara to the screening for a Q&A afterwards, as well as to a round-table discussion on Saturday after CEDDO.
For more information about the Cambridge African Film Festival, please visit: www.cambridgeafricanfilmfestival.co.uk
The festival thanks the Arts Picturehouse, Screen East, New Hall, Cambridge City Council, the Centre for African Studies, Smuts Fund and Trinity College for their generous support. Our partner festival is the Edinburgh Africa-In-Motion African Film Festival 2007.
CAMBRIDGE AFRICAN FILM FESTIVAL
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