African Film Festival
A generation who represents the future has experienced internal displacement, international economic stranglehold, war, and environmental degradation, however technology and the DIY spirit has empowered these artists to forge new cultural identities and refashion their spaces. Basically, each new generation somehow becomes the adult in the room. There is an urgency and hunger to own their stories and be the ones to tell it! Many of the themes in their works address social justice and human rights issues, even when it is a comedy. So as gloomy as our world seems right now, there is also hope in certain corners.
For thirty years, African Film Festival, Inc. (AFF) has bridged the divide between post-colonial Africa and the American public through the medium of film. AFF's unique place in the international arts community is distinguished not only by leadership in festival management but by a comprehensive approach to the advocacy of African and diaspora film and culture. Launched in 1993, the New York African Film Festival (NYAFF) is presented annually by African Film Festival, Inc. and Film at Lincoln Center, in association with Brooklyn Academy of Music. AFF also produces a series of local, national, and international programs throughout the year.
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Bronx Gothic (Okwui Okpokwasili)
Directed by Andrew Rossi • Documentary • With Okwui Okpokwasili • 2017 • 91 minutes
From director Andrew Rossi (Page One: Inside the New York Times, The First Monday in May) comes an electrifying portrait of writer and performer Okwui Okpokwasili and her acclaimed one-woman show, Bronx Gothic. R...
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Casa de Lava
Directed by Pedro Costa • Drama • With Inês de Medeiros, Isaach De Bankolé • 1994 • 108 minutes
In only his second feature, Portuguese filmmaker Pedro Costa (Horse Money, In Vanda’s Room) brilliantly reworked Jacques Tourneur’s classic I Walked with a Zombie into a reflection on his country’s co...
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The Poets
Directed by Chivas DeVinck • Documentary • 2018 • 99 minutes
Syl Cheney-Coker (author of The Last Harmattan of Alusine Dunbar, which won the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize) and Niyi Osundare (recipient of the Nigerian National Merit Award, Nigeria’s highest recognition for distinguished academic an...
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For the Best and for the Onion!
Directed by Elhadj Magori Sani • Documentary • 2008 • 52 minutes
"I am singing about onion farming, bringing both suffering and joy." So sings an onion farmer as he works his field Galmi, in Niger. Beside him stands Yaro, a fellow farmer who knows all too well the hope and sorrow his livelihood ...
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Dam/Age
Directed by Aradhana Seth • Documentary • 2002 • 50 minutes
"I suddenly realized… I command the space to raise a dissenting voice, and if I don't do it, it's as political an act as doing it… to stay quiet is as political an act as speaking out."- Arundhati Roy, Author of Booker Prize Winner The ...
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Lamb
Directed by Yared Zeleke • Drama • With Rediat Amare, Kidist Siyum, Welela Assefa • 2016 • 94 minutes
Yared Zeleke's remarkable feature debut tells the story of young Ephraim, a half-Jewish, Ethiopian boy who is sent by his father to live among distant relatives after his mother's death. Ephraim...
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Mama Colonel
Directed by Dieudo Hamadi • Documentary • 2017 • 72 minutes
Colonel Honorine Manyole, commonly known as 'Mama Colonel,' works for the Congolese police force and heads the unit for the protection of minors and the fight against sexual violence. Having worked for 15 years in Bukavu, in the east of...
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Miners Shot Down
Directed by Rehad Desai • Documentary • 2014 • 86 minutes
In August 2012, mine workers in one of South Africa's biggest platinum mines began a wildcat strike for better wages. Six days into the strike, the police used live ammunition to brutally suppress it, killing 34 and injuring many more. Th...
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Profit and Nothing But!
Directed by Raoul Peck • Documentary • 2001 • 52 minutes
Who said that the economy serves mankind? What is this world where one third of the population, in the rich countries, or more precisely the wealthiest two percent in these countries, control everything? A world where the economy is law, w...
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Secundaria
Directed by Mary Jane Doherty • Documentary • With Mayara Piñeiro, Gabriela Moreno, Moises Noriega • 2013 • 96 minutes
Secundaria quietly follows one high school class on its journey through Cuba's world-famous National Ballet School. The teens love to dance, but for many of them dance is also t...
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They Are We
Directed by Emma Christopher, Ph.D. • Documentary • 2014 • 79 minutes
THEY ARE WE is the story of a remarkable reunion, 170 or so years after a family was driven apart by the ravages of the transatlantic slave trade. In Central Cuba, proud members of the Ganga-Longoba, a small Afro-Cuban ethnic ...
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Through A Lens Darkly
Directed by Thomas Allen Harris • Documentary • 2014 • 92 minutes
The first documentary to explore the American family photo album through the eyes of black photographers, Through a Lens Darkly probes the recesses of American history to discover images that have been suppressed, forgotten and lo...
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The Two Faces of a Bamileke Woman
Directed by Rosine Mbakam • Documentary • 2016 • 76 minutes
Rosine Mbakam left Cameroon at 27 to live in Belgium. Seven years later—having studied film and married a European—she returns to make what she calls a journey into darkness—to the village of her birth, and later to the capital city of ...
