Lensing a Troubled Continent
Movie Review of the New York African Film
Festival
Volume IV, Issue 16 | April 21 - 27,
2005FILM12TH
ANNUAL NEW YORK AFRICAN FILM
FESTIVALWalter Reade Theater,
165 W. 65th St., Apr. 20-28Eyebeam,
540 W. 21st St., May 12-19BAM Rose
Cinemas, 30 Lafayette Ave. near Flatbush Ave.m May
26-29For complete information, visit
africanfilmny.orgCOURTESY
FILM SOCIETY OF LINCOLN CENTERUnidentified
girls are presented as the post-circumcision, purified girls in Ousmane
Sembene’s 2004 film “Moolaadé” from Senegal. A film about
the production of this movie, “The Making of Moolade,” is also being
presented.Lensing a Troubled
ContinentNew York
African Film Festival offers introspection, insights from an indigenous
angleBy SETH J.
BOOKEYMaking a movie is a complex
adventure, and making a movie in Africa multiplies the
challenges.To tell the painful stories
of colonial atrocities, genocides, apartheid and the subordinated condition of
women in sub-Saharan Africa, filmmakers must deal with politics, the challenge
of raising funds and the difficulties of continuing the storytelling traditions
of the continent, but on film and while reaching for a global
audience.This year’s New York
African Film Festival includes several themes, one of which looks at these
filmmaking politics.From Niger, there is
“Al’lessi... An African Actress,” Rahmatou Keita’s look
at Zalika Souley, the “bad girl” of that nation’s emerging
cinema in the 1960s. The film juxtaposes her various roles as women who go
against the grain while we see her today, at 60, still sweeping her own floor
and pounding her own millet. The documentary also talks to directors of
Niger’s early films.Archival
footage shows amazing scenes of Africans emulating the cowboys of the westerns
they loved, but chasing giraffes rather than cattle. The fundamental tragedy of
Souley’s story is that while she was sent abroad to represent Niger at
film festivals, she received no compensation, and no respect either back home.
Passersby on the street would sometimes call her “a poison in
society.” “Al’lessi... An African Actress” offers a
glimpse at a cinematic tradition most Americans have never
seen.“Kuxa Kanema” examines
the high hopes that accompanied the establishment 11 years ago of
Mozambique’s National Institute of Cinema, and how today it is moribund
and rotting away. “The Making of Moolade” looks at how that 2004
Senegalese movie brought together a diverse group to tell the story of one
woman’s rebellion against female
circumcision.The elucidating documentary
“The Colonial Misunderstanding” provides an interesting take on the
1884 agreement in which the European powers carved up all of Africa for
themselves, and argues that Germany’s atrocities in its African colonies
laid the foundations for forced labor in both World Wars and the Holocaust as
well. The term “concentration camp” first came about in Namibia when
the Germans went after the Herrero people between 1904 and 1907 even though they
had already been effectively subdued
militarily.The film also documents how
missionaries in Germany’s colonies in Togo, Cameroun and South Africa
“civilized” black Africans by treating them like second-class
citizens without a valid cultural tradition.
“The Colonial
Misunderstanding,” however, does not only call the European powers to
task. It also notes the failure of the African kings and chiefs to look at
Africa’s fate collectively, which facilitated their conquerors’
efforts in drawing arbitrary boundaries that led to incongruous nations, with
tragic consequences that continue
today.Many films in the festival are
devoted to South African themes. The short film “Waiting for Valdez”
shows how a grandmother’s love and guidance helps a young man in
Johannesburg navigate the turmoil of 1970s apartheid. Rehad Desai’s
“Born into Struggle” documents the heroic profile of the
filmmaker’s activist father, who was unable to also be emotionally present
for his family.Hollywood and European
cinema have at times focused on African themes, but seeing the stories told
entirely from an indigenous point of view is an opportunity most of us have
never had. While the Samuel L. Jackson vehicle “In My Country”
looked at the new South Africa’s “Truth and Reconciliation
Commission” hearings, it’s good to see a film like
“Forgiveness,” in which director Ian Gabriel tells the narrative
tale of a man who, granted amnesty for his crimes, insists on visiting the
family of one of his victims. Gabriel’s fictional feature uncovers
tragedies on both sides of apartheid—the white man is seeking forgiveness,
but the victim’s family continues to bear shame about their loved
one’s shady background and associations. When the dead man’s sister
tips off his old comrades to the white man’s visit, we learn that one of
the three in fact betrayed her
brother.One of the more brutal, and
riveting, offerings is Eric Kabera’s “Keepers of Memory.”
Kabera visits six massacre sites from Rwanda’s 1994 genocidal civil war.
Each locale features a “guardian” who tells their own extraordinary
stories. One woman, exasperated at losing her whole family, says, “Only
God can judge them.” Another woman refuses to cover up the scars of being
hit in the head with machetes, preferring to make a point of
them.Because the Rwandan genocide led to
one million deaths in about 100 days, the killing was not systematic enough to
cover up the crimes. We see rooms full of skulls and bones, sometimes neatly on
display, sometimes, as at one church, with the victims’ bones and clothes
still in the place where their bodies fell. “Keepers” is raw and
powerful, not just for showing us these difficult images, but for giving us
first-hand testimonies from the survivors. The footage includes scenes of people
being hunted down and killed by their neighbors, and many U.N. vehicles and
tanks escorting Europeans out of Rwanda without paying any mind to the genocide
surrounding them. The film takes us to places “Hotel Rwanda” never
went near.The festival also delves into
more prosaic social issues. In “Laafi,” from Burkina Faso, a bright
young man is denied the opportunity to study medicine, and persists in fighting
the red tape. In the simply told “Wendemi,” also from Faso, we see
the title character’s sad life as the unwanted son of a very young woman
who abandons him after her own father banishes her for not revealing the name of
the child’s father. At every stage, people in authority fail
Wendemi.“Silmande” shows how
a Lebanese family takes refuge in Africa and prospers; but when the parents
decide to return to Lebanon their children want to stay where they grew up. In
“Me and My White Pal,” we see how an African student in Paris deals
with waiting for scholarship money that ultimately never
arrives.The African Film Festival sheds
light on one of the most bustling but also troubled continents in a
comprehensive manner. New Yorkers have a range of opportunities for seeing these
films, at Walter Reade, Eyebeam, and BAM, in schedules that run through the end
of May. Visit africanfilmny.org for full schedule and for more information about
screenings outside New York.
Posted: Thu - April 21, 2005 at 10:48 PM
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Published On: Jun 20, 2009 07:04 PM
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