The Thirteenth Annual African Film Festival

Abstract

The Thirteenth Annual African Film Festival Drake Stutesman (bio) The programming of the 2006 African Film Festival, held in New York City at the magnificent Walter Reade Theater (with perfect sight lines from every seat), the International Center of Photography (currently hosting the excellent contemporary African photography exhibit), and the Brooklyn Academy of Music, underscored that some of the best current films are coming out of Africa. With selections from Algeria, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Ethiopia, Gabon, Guinea, Ivory Coast, Mali, Morocco, Nigeria, Rwanda, South Africa, Senegal, Sudan, and Zimbabwe, with a dozen shorts and a mix of documentaries and features, and the new inclusion of North African work, the fare this year was exciting. Retrospectives of two talented, individualistic Cameroonian directors—Jean-Marie Téno and Jean-Pierre Bekolo—were screened. As a "Best of African Film Festival" spin-off held at BAM, Téno's Colonial Misunderstanding (CM/FR/DE, 2004), Alex's Wedding (CM/FR, 2003), A Trip to the Country (CM/FR/DE, 2000), Clando (CM/FR/DE, 1996), and Head in the Clouds (CM, 1994)—collage-like, cut-up documentaries about colonialism and the African diaspora—well represented his best work. Bekolo, who at forty is twelve years younger than Téno, has a much smaller oeuvre but is one of the most imaginative minds working in any cinema today. He "dreams of a cinema which puts the public in a state of shock," and describes film not as a "political tool" or "weapon, but maybe a scanner of the invisible world that I carry in me," and accepts the blending of inside and outside, stating, "if that inner world is political, then my film has a political dimension." Following the leads of the great Djibril Diop Mambéty, Bekolo constructs what a westerner might describe as a cubist structure and storyline, with strong, stark framing, rich color and often a love of a dark or night interior. His second film, the exuberant, funny, and visually arresting [End Page 134] Aristotle's Plot (CM, 1996) was commissioned for the BFI's Film Centennial to celebrate the 100 year anniversary of cinema, and its premise, in Bekolo's words, was to find out "if Africa had a film history," and whether the Aristotelian formula of fear-pity-catharsis, narrative's alleged universal common denominator, truly applied to the African sensibility. This film screened with his equally wonderful, magical gender-bending Quartier Mozart (CM, 1991), Grandma's Grammar (CM, 1996), his nine minute discussion about film with Mambéty, and his new film, Les Saignantes (The Bloodettes, CM, 2005), which follows two hip young women who coolly deal with not too futuristic sex, death, and political corruption, and has been named the first science fiction film out of Africa. This new film in particular is sophisticated, sleek, riveting, inscrutable, and beautiful, and is an apex of his style. Both directors, as most African directors, have had European or American educations and/or live abroad as much as in their home countries, and most films have had to find co-funding from European sources. These two filmmakers neither ignore nor side-step these inextricable influences, but use them to confront specifically African issues in fascinating ways not found in the common western reach. Other highlights were Mark Donford-May's stunning U-CarmeneKhayelitsha (ZA, 2005) a contemporary South African version of Bizet's Carmen, lusciously sung in Xhosa, with a welcome and unusually sympathetic portrayal of Carmen, compellingly played by singer Pauline Malefane. Also from South Africa were Conversations on a Sunday Afternoon (Khalo Matabane, ZA, 2005) an inventive, emotional mixture of fiction and archival footage focused on exiles, and Zanele Muholi fifteen-minute Enraged by a Picture (ZA, 2005), a clear, hard-hitting film on reactions to Muholi's strong photographs of lesbians. The Sudanese All about Darfur (Taghreed Elsanhouri, SD/UK, 2005) was a valuable collection of voices of Sudanese people. Veteran director S. Pierre Yameogo's Delwende (BF, 2005) and the North African short Amal (Ali Benkirane, MA/FR, 2005) sharply addressed the miseries foisted on women by traditions and superstition, both using the stock African village story, but with swift, impacting scenes. Sijiri Bakaba's...