WEDNESDAY MAY 5

EARLY AFRICAN CINEMA 6 - 7.30pm

 

AFRIQUE-SUR-SEINE
Director: Paulin Soumanou Vieyra. Starring: Marpessa Dawn, Annette M’Baye, Mamadou Sarr. France/Senegal. 1957. 21 mins. In French. No subtitles.

AFRIQUE-SUR-SEINE is widely regarded as the first film made by an African outh of the Sahara. Labelled an “ethnological documentary in reverse,” it shows 1950s Paris from the cinematic perspective of a group of African immigrants. The Senegalese director Paulin Soumanou Vieyra made a huge contribution to the emergent field of African filmmaking and African film theory. He made over a dozen films, and wrote a number of books, including the seminal work Le Cinema et L'Afrique.

MOI UN NOIR
Director: Jean Rouch. Starring: Oumarou Ganda, Petit Touré, Alassane Maiga, Amadou Demba. Niger/France. 1958. 70 mins. In French. No subtitles.

Made by the 'Father of Cinéma Verité,' this film follows on from the themes of Jean Rouch’s earlier ethnographic films (immigration to African coast towns; relationships between colonizers and colonizeds) by charting a day-in-the-life of three young Nigerien men who are working in Abidjan as casual laborers. It was hailed as "the best French film since the liberation" by Jean-Luc Godard, but has been challenged by the 'Father of African Cinema,' Ousmane Sembene, for regarding Africans like "ants."

FESTIVAL OPENING EVENT 8pm

THE PURPLE SHALL GOVERN
Director: Mark Ashurst. South Africa, Congo, Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria and Zimbabwe. 70 mins.

DIRECTOR IN PERSON

In Cape Town in the 1980s, the security police used water cannon to break up crowds protesting against apartheid. Demonstrators were sprayed with indelible ink. When the rallies dispersed, anyone stained purple could be rounded up and detained. Soon after, a new slogan appeared in giant graffiti on the motorway flyover outside the city: The Purple Shall Govern.

Mark Ashurst has reported from Africa for the BBC, Newsweek, The Financial Times, The Economist and The Guardian. As a journalist, he has been motivated by the difficulty of conveying in the mainstream media the epochal scope of Africa’s transition over the past decade. His remarkable multi-media performance piece with spoken narrative, The Purple Shall Govern, is a personal retrospective and draws on his own unique archive of audio and video, and the work of writers and artists spanning three centuries. Inspired by Frank Kermode’s seminal book on the apocalyptic mode in fiction, The Sense of an Ending, it argues that the overarching narrative of renaissance and decline that defines Africa has become an obstacle to progress. Primarily, The Purple Shall Govern is a cultural piece exploring certain convictions which shape representations of Africa, with references to Chinua Achebe, Bessie Head, Hip-Hop, Kwaito, Economic Structural Adjustment, information technology, Shakespeare and Yeats. More broadly, The Purple Shall Govern is a plea for tolerance. It illustrates why the apocalyptic mode in so many reports from Africa is mythical, and weighs so heavily on its prospects.

The Purple Shall Govern has been well received at festivals in Harare, Zanzibar and during Black History Month in Manchester.

www.thepurpleshallgovern.co.uk

 

THURSDAY MAY 6

WOMEN IN AFRICAN CINEMA

6 - 7.20pm Special Focus on Anne-Laure Folly

Anne-Laure Folly, from Togo, is one of Africa's few female filmmakers, yet one of its finest. After winning the Silver Medal at the Monte Carlo Television Festival in 1994 for her documentary Femmes aux Yeux Ouverts, she established herself as a documentarist with a vision for representing African issues from across the continent: her first film revealed women from Benin, Burkina Faso, Mali, and Senegal speaking about the joys and difficulties of their lives; her latest film – Sarah Maldoror ou La Nostalgie de l'Utopie (1998) – is a tribute to another 'African' female filmmaker, Sarah Maldoror, who attended the Second Cambridge African film festival in 2003 to show her classic film Sambizanga (1972). We are delighted to be screening two of Folly's films, Les Oubliees and Deposez les Lames.

Les Oubliees
Director: Anne-Laure Folly. Angola/Togo. 1996. 53min. In French and Portuguese with French subtitles.

This documentary seeks out and engages the victims of the 30-year Angolan war (first begun as a colonial war, later a civil war) in order to try to understand the impact that this traumatic event had on society in Luanda.  

Deposez les Lames
Director: Anne-Laure Folly. Senegal/Togo. 1999. 25min. In French. No subtitles.

In this short documentary, Folly sets out to examine the practice of female excision, which affects two million girls in the world every year. The filmmaker trains her lens on Senegal, where 20 years of protesting by Senegalese women has finally resulted in a law against the practice.

Short Film Programme 8pm - 9.10

8pm

AIMS
Dir. Clayton Hairs, Bjoern Hassler, and Alan Jackson. South Africa, 2003, 10min.

A short film about the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences, a venture to develop mathematical potential in students from across Africa.

8.10pm Films by Ethiopian Children

STOLEN CHILDHOOD
Dir. Adanech Admassu Camera. Ethiopia, 2003, 12min.
Saba Engeda Production: Gem TV, Ethiopia

Supported by the Ethiopian NGO Gemini Trust.

Kebebush is one of the many child brides in Ethiopia. She was married at the age of eight years. In her own words, Kebebush tells how she fled from the countryside to the city of Addis Ababa where she is abused sexually. With no education, she is forced to make her living as a prostitute. The interview with Kebebush is intercut with deft dramatisations of key scenes in her story.

This film was made by Gem TV, a project that has given young Ethiopians from disadvantaged backgrounds, the chance to learn video production skills. 'Stolen Childhood' was screened to the full Ethiopian parliament as part of a workshop to develop new legislation on early marriage. It also won best film in the UNICEF 'Say Yes To Children' campaign.

8.30pm Films by Dominique Chadwick
DIRECTOR IN PERSON

THE BROKEN PROMISE
The Learning Circle Group. Tamale, Ghana, 2003, 18min. English subtitles and voice over.

Set in northern Ghana, "THE BROKEN PROMISE" uncovers the fate of thousands of little fostered girls like Rashida. who, at the age of 10, was taken out of school to be fostered with her grandparents so she could look after them. THE BROKEN PROMISE was shot and produced by "The Learning Circle", a group of 21 women from Tamale in Ghana. All the women were given hands-on-training in filming with digital cameras and in simple editing techniques by Dominique Chadwick, a Cambridge filmmaker and Abibata Mahama, a Ghanaian television producer. Some of the women in the group have never been to school and are non-literate and others have severe hearing and sight impairment and limited mobility. Through this participatory learning project the women have now the rare opportunity to share their stories and advocate through film in their communities.

The project brings together 3 international NGOs working in close collaboration with their local partners in Ghana. CAMFED International co-ordinated the project in partnership with Womankind Worldwide and ADD (Action for Disability and Development). The project was supported by Comic Relief.

ADUGNA - A Shared Gift
Dir. Dominique Chadwick. Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, 2003, 22 min. English subtitles.

Supported by the Ethiopian NGO Gemini Trust.

What started as an experimental community dance project in the streets of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, is now a vibrant, internationally acclaimed success story. It is the story of 16 young people from the streets of Addis who were chosen by international choreographer Royston Maldoom and his Anglo-Ethiopian team, to be trained over a period of 5 years in African traditional and contemporary dance, choreography and teaching skills. It is a story of feeding skills back to the community of social outreach and advocacy. Through dance and drama, Adugna's dancers provide they audience with a greater realisation of their own worth as individuals, and with an increased awareness about social issues such as HIV/AIDS, civil rights and discrimination. Members of the company have performed at many leading art and music festivals at home and abroad, as their growing reputation has extended beyond the country's borders.

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