INDIGOKAFE

Genesis: Directed by Cheick Oumar Sissoko

Editor's Note: Cheick Ourmar Sissoko's awe-inspiring GENESIS retells the Biblical feud between brothers Esau and Jacob, of the house of Abraham. Based on the book of Genesis, chapters 33-37, this film examines the intersection of religious devotion, rage, and greed. In the story, Jacob cheats Esau out of a blessing from their father. Esau vows revenge, and the ensuing conflict stirs the threat of an endless loop of violence for both their families and their cousin Hamor. Masterfully directed and photographed, this film provides new depth to its Biblical subject.

 

Carmen Gei (2001): Directed by Joseph Gaï Ramaka

Senegalese director Joseph Gai Ramaka re-imagines Georges Bizet's oft-filmed opera CARMEN--from Preminger's CARMEN JONES to MTV's CARMEN: A HIP-HOPERA--in a joyously sensual, colorful musical set in modern-day Dakar. Karmen Gei (Ramaka's wife, Djeinaba Diop Gai), a stately beauty in tribal robes, leaps and shakes to primal drummers in the seaside town's square, surrounded by cheering townswomen, and trains her seductive powers on Angelique (Stephanie Biddle), the prison warden. When Karmen is arrested, a steamy assignation with Angelique wins her release. Once free, Karmen rapidly sings and dances her way to another conquest--this time, of a high-ranking army officer, Lamine Diop (Magaye Niang). With her endemic charisma and dangerous sexuality, Karmen achieves Lamine's downfall instantaneously--he soon finds himself demoted and jailed. Meanwhile, Karmen's voracious appetite leads her to a new suitor, wealthy balladeer Massigi (El Hadj Ndiaye), who literally sings her out of Lamine's bed. While planning a job with some criminal friends, Karmen has a vision of women in whiteface, the death's head--a warning that her carefree life may be in danger. With primeval drumbeats, haunting music, and a screen-commanding performance by Diop Gai, Ramaka provides a sensual new twist on the Carmen myth.--Movies.com

 

Waiting for Happiness (2002): Directed by Abderrahmane Sissako

Abderrahmane Sissako (BAMAKO) has established himself as one of Africa's leading filmmakers. This hypnotic tone poem confirms Sissako's talent for capturing the essence of a particular place through evocative imagery, low-key comedy, and close observation of everyday life. In this case, the place is a spectacularly isolated, wind-scoured cluster of adobe buildings perched on a bleached desert plain that ends abruptly at the blue ocean. The lives of its inhabitants, in keeping with this austere environment, are pared down to two basic choices: adaptation or exile. In the latter category is Abdallah, a citified college student who temporarily returns home and, unable to speak or dress like a native, becomes painfully, comically alienated. Opposed to him is Khatra, an alert, curious boy apprenticed to the wizardly local electrician, who demonstrates how apparent oppositions (such as magic/technology, globalization/village life) might be reconciled through improvisation and patience. The precision of Sissako's compositions evokes Antonioni and Ozu, but the loose narrative structure is closer to Altman and Wenders. WAITING FOR HAPPINESS spins its overlapping stories and intersecting characters into a prismatic cascade of enigmas, epiphanies, deadpan gags, and haunting images. J. Hoberman of THE VILLAGE VOICE described the film as 'refreshing as welcome as a cool breeze on a summer afternoon' and David Parkinson of EMPIRE declared 'it's impossible to remain unmoved.'

Dumisani Phakathi
Dumisani Phakathi was born in Soweto twenty six years ago. Having matriculated in 1993 at Phafogang High School in Soweto, he went to work at Die Beeld, a leading Afrikaans newspaper. In 1995, Dumi joined TV production company - Urban Brew -as a trainee director. A year later he conceptualized his own youth actuality programme called The Electric Workshop which went on for five years with the same company. 1996 marked a move into theater as he enrolled for a training programme at the Market Theater Laboratory, deciding to try his hand at acting. Whilst there he worked on numerous plays, one of his favorites being Gomorrah, which went on to tour throughout Europe. This was the beginning of his work in drama....

Theo Eshetu
Filmography: Rites of Passage, Thunder and Lighting, Another Time Another Place, My Better Half, La morte i diretta, Back to Zero, That's Life...

Alain Gomis
Filsm: Caramels and Chocolates, Tout le monde peut se tromper, Whirlwinds, L'Afrance, Small Light

Mahamat Saleh Haroun
Our Father: Aka: Abouna An unsentimental depiction of everyday life in modern Africa. Set in Chad, this visually assured story of two boys' search for their father is told with a pleasing narrative economy. The cinematography is impressive and it's backed by a haunting score by Ali Farka Toure.

Jean-Pierre Bekolo
Filmography: Jean-Pierre Bekolo

Balufu Bakupa-Kanyinda
BALUFU BAKUPA-KANYINDA, Democratic Rep. of Congo :: Afro@Digital & The Draughtsmen Clash ::

Roger Gnoan M'Bala
This historic drama is about an African whose village is captured and its inhabitants forced into slavery by the African collaborator Adanggaman (Rasmane Ouedraogo). Traitorous and arbitrary, Adanggaman has a round face that constantly calls out for the rum the Dutch traders ply him with. The film's Ivory Coast-born director, Roger Gnoan M'Bala — who wrote the screenplay with Jean-Marie Adlaffi and Bertin Akaffou — blends truth and fiction, and the storytelling is so simple that its directness feels fresh and rousing. The scenes of Africans marching in chains and stocks, monitored by other Africans, are a shock and linger in your mind for days afterward.

Filmography: Roger Gnoan M'Bala

Jean-Marie Teno
Born 1954, Famleng, Cameroon the artist lives and works in Chantillion, France.

Jean-Marie Teno: Filmography

Moolaade by Ousmane Sembene
'Four girls -- refusing to have their bodies 'cut' -- flee to a strong willed woman who had protected her daughter from circumcision. As the other villagers -- including relatives -- try to force the rebel to part with the girls, she invokes the time-honoured custom of 'moolade' that offers inviolable sanctuary. Even as her daughter's marriage is imperiled by her bold stance, the mother stands her ground. In the buoyant, witty and colourful film Moolaade, which does not obscure the terror the young girls face, a strong Oscar contender for foreign films has emerged. It was a big favourite at the Toronto International Film Festival. Critic Roger Ebert, who loved the film, is already predicting an Oscar for it'.--Arthur J. Pais: Toronto

Ousmane Sembene
Born in 1923 in Casamance, southern Senegal, where his fisherman father had migrated from Dakar, Ousmane Sembene, or just Sembene, as many critics call him, has been hailed as one of the most prolific African writers and "the father of African film.

Filmography: Ousmane Sembene
The first film director from an African country to achieve international recognition, Ousmane Sembene remains the major figure in the rise of an independent post-colonial African cinema. Sembene's roots were not, as might be expected, in the educated élite.

 

Xala (1975) Directed by Ousmane Sembene

Nelly's Bodega
Drama 1999: Director: Omonike Akinyemi: Length: 50 minutes

Filmography: Chieck Oumar Sissoko
I never choose to make a film about a subject. It is a political and social situation that makes me handle a story. Up to the present I have followed this law of the needs of African societies and their emergencies. This is how I came to make Sécheresse et exode rural in 1984, a documentary o the tragedy of man and the land. Do you remember? Sub-Saharan Africa was experiencing for the second time in ten years a drought, the terrifying consequences of which were wrongly presented as inevitable.

Wanjiru Kinyanjui
"I'm sure I wouldn't have gotten involved in film if I had stayed here, but I studied German literature abroad, met a few filmmakers, and I actually got to see many African films there in Berlin. That got me really interested. I had always been interested in drama, you know, right from primary school. We used to organize ourselves and do skits every end of term on Parent's Day. All that came back at university. I was in the drama club, small roles, because I wanted direct. I had some film school friends. I was actually teaching some of them Swahili. I told them, I think I'd like to go into film. They said, okay! There¹s a good film school in Berlin and you can apply."WK

The Battle of the Sacred Tree
This delightful Kenyan comedy tells the story of a free-spirited, strong-willed feminist who defies social convention and leaves her abusive husband. Mumbi was purchased by her husband Mwangi.

Idrissa Ouedraogo: Cannes

Idrissa Ouedraogo
Filmography: 'I don't represent my continent as such, but if I win the Palme d'Or, I know that young people in Africa will be proud in the same way that they're proud of a footballer like George Weah or a musician like Youssou N'Dour.' Idrissa Ouedraogo is talking about his new feature, Kini & Adams, which follows his 1990 Grand Jury Prize winner, Tilai, into competition at Cannes. A small-scale ($2 million), English-language story about a pair of irrepressible dreamers who yearn to escape the rural backwaters of their home village and head for the bright lights of the city, it is both a celebration of friendship and a trenchant little allegory about the destructive effects of ambition. Its key symbol is the battered old car which Kini and Adams decide to renovate. They lavish attention on the upholstery, but somehow they never get round to making the vehicle actually work.

Flora Gomes: Filmography
Nha fala, Po di Sangui, et al.

The Blue Eyes of Yonta by Flora Gomes
(The Blue Eyes of Yonta) is one of the few recent African films to make the disillusionment of the revolutionary generation its primary subject.

Waiting for Happiness: By Abderrahmane Sissako
Abderrahmane Sissako's Heremakono (Waiting for Happiness ) is an elegiac portrait of a transit city on the West African coast struggling against foreign influences. Abdallah (Mohamed Mahmoud Ould Mohamed) returns to his homeland for an indeterminate amount of time. Now a stranger to his own community and language, the young man tries to absorb as much local color (literally and figuratively) before embarking for Europe.

Abderrahmane Sissako: Filmography
Film or films screened at the International Film Festival Rotterdam.

 

 

Abderrahmane Sissako Interview

Biography of Gaston Kabore
Kabore started out as a history student at the Centre d'Etudes Superieures d'Histoire d'Ouagadougou and continued his studies in Paris where he received an MA. During his studies he became interested in how Africa was portrayed abroad, which then led him, in 1974, to study cinematography at the Ecole Superieure d'Etudes Cinematographiques. Further inspiration came upon viewing Ousmane Sembene's Xala, which he saw as an example of how film could be used to express African culture. After returning to Africa, Kabore was made director of the Centre National du Cinema and taught at the Institut African d'Education Cinematographique. Along with students under his direction there he made his first film, 'Je Reviens De Bokin' (I Come From Bokin).

 

Ouverture du cycle "Africamania" à la Cinémathèque française

Gaston Kabore

Wend Kuuni
Wend Kuuni: Directed by Gaston Kabore

Kwaw Ansah
Kwaw Ansah is highly appreciated in Ghana, where he is a mentor to many young artists, and has received a number of Ghanaian awards. In 1998 he was awarded the Acrag Prize, the Living Legend Award for Contribution to the Arts of Ghana.

Heritage Africa
The film is a riveting exploration of the impact of colonialism in the Gold Coast (the colonial name for present-day Ghana) through its central character, a man named Kwesi ("Sunday-born") Atta ("a twin") Bosomefi ("an illustrious ancestor has been reborn"), who prefers to be called Quincy Arthur Bosomfield. The perfect product of colonial education, Bosomfield embraces English culture in all forms, rising within the colonial administration to become an African district commissioner (a rarity) and member of the black educated "elite." In the process, he abandons his African heritage and all that has real meaning to him. Only after a series of humiliating encounters, peppered with vivid recollections of his past and a frightening and revealing dream, does he reclaim his true identity and heritage.

La Vie est Belle
La Vie est Belle takes us inside the vibrant music scene of Kinshasha, Zaire's exhilarating and exasperating capital whose back alleys and clubs pulsate to the beat of some of the most influential music in the world. The film, starring World Beat music legend, Papa Wemba, tells the "rags to riches" story of a poor country musician who seeks fame in the city's vibrant music industry. This lively farce illustrates Zairians' faith in Systeme-D or debrouillardise, fending for yourself to survive in the face of overwhelming obstacles. If there is a commercial cinema in Africa's future, then La Vie est Belle may be one of its precursors.

Life is Rosy: La vie est belle
Mweze Ngangura's first feature, La Vie est Belle (Life is Beautiful), released in 1987, remains to this day one of the most accessible and entertaining African films ever made. Starring soukous super star, Papa Wemba, it uses the rags to riches story of a Congolese musician to demonstrate that ordinary Africans are capable of joy and that Africa has its own vibrant contemporary popular culture.

Mossane
In this Sengalese melodrama, a beautiful village girl finds herself torn between tradition and modern values. Mossane is only 14 but is considered by the villagers to be an extraordinary beauty.

Thunderbolt by Tunde Kelani
The first half of the film is in a sense a retelling of the Othello story - except the protagonists are not Abyssinian and Venetian but Yoruba and Ibo. Yinka and Ngozi met in the National Youth Service Corps; Ngozi is finishing her stint as a teacher in a village while Yinka already works as a construction engineer in a nearby city. The seeds of jealousy are planted when a friend of Yinka, like Iago in the Shakespeare play, suggests that Ngozi is having a secret affair because "Ibo are untrustworthy." Adding to Yinka's suspicions, Ngozi has recently inherited some money and so is a financially independent woman. In this half, as in the Shakespeare play or any standard Western melodrama, the action is propelled entirely by psychological motivations.

Tunde Kelani

 

Tsotsi:

ACADEMY AWARD® WINNER: 2006 Best Foreign Language Film of the Year

 

Madame Brouette by Moussa Sene Absa

Mousa Sene Absa:Filmography
Recent Filmography

Moussa Sene Absa
The Director: Moussa Sene Absa overflows with creativity. He is an artist, writer, and musician, as well as a film director. He made his debut as an actor, then moved to directing with the production of his own stage play, La Légende de Ruba. In cinema, he wrote the screenplay for Les Enfants de Dieu which was honoured at the Francophone film festival.

Candlelight Dinner by Mobolaji Olambiwonnu

Mobolaji Olambiwonnu - Director: Candlelight Dinner

Mobolaji is an American of Jamaican and Nigerian parentage with 8 years of production experience. He has directed several award winning short films including: Candlelight Dinner and Who Killed America? Which were recognized in the 1999 and 2001 National Black Programming Consortium (NBPC) Prized Pieces Film Festival respectively, and The Visit which received a Directors Guild of America student director award. Olambiwonnu holds a BA from UCLA in communications theory and an MFA in directing from the American Film Institute.

Rick Famuyiwa

When Rick Famuyiwa graduated from the University of Southern California film school in 1996 he discovered that a film school degree does not guarantee a job in the industry. Some grads are lucky to have a job on the fringes, but Famuyiwa was as far away from working in Hollywood as anyone could get because his job was selling apparel at Niketown.

Fortunately for Famuyiwa, his dead end situation was about to end since his 12 minute student short, Blacktop Lingo, got into Sundance and Michelle Satter, the director of the Sundance Filmmaker's Lab, was tracking him down to invite him to develop his first feature at the Lab. In 1998, two years after graduating, Famuyiwa was directing his feature debut The Wood. The critically acclaimed film was a box-office success, which made it possible for him to write and direct his latest, Brown Sugar. The son of Nigerian immigrants.

Conversations with Rick Famuyiwa
SM: You made your feature debut, The Wood, in 1998, which was two years after you graduated so you were ahead of schedule. RF: At the time you're going through it and you don't know whether things are going to work out. It seemed difficult, but again it was the same kind of thing that I think I dealt with in the application process at the film school. I think once I had my film in Sundance I was convinced that I had made it.

To Purchase the Film: Brown Sugar

Preview

To Purchase the Film:Nelly's Bodega

Pan African Film Festival
Established in 1992, The Pan African Film Festival (PAFF) is a non-profit corporation dedicated to the promotion of cultural and racial tolerance and understanding through the exhibition of film, art and creative expression. It is PAFF's goal to present and showcase the broad spectrum of Black creative works, particularly those that reinforce positive images and help to destroy negative stereotypes.

Panafrican Film and Television
Panafrican Film and Television Festival of Ouagadougou (FESPACO) is the largest African film festival.The next edition will be held from 26th February to 5th March 2005

African Films and Filmmakers
This document was created for the 1998 Carter Lectures on Africa on the theme of Africa on Film and Video. It is a guide to searching LUIS for relevant materials, and contains a reading list and some Web sites that may be useful to anyone interested in African film.

African Filmmakers

African Filmmakers -Alphabetical Listing
The films included in this list have been identified primarily by reading African newspapers and magazines and articles on and programs of film festivals held in Africa, Europe and North America. Since the first list in this series was complied, more attention is being given to television films and video production both in the African press and at some film festivals.

African Film Festival: New York
The African Film Festival, Inc. (AFF) is a New York non-profit 501-C3 arts organization. The organization, established in 1990, began as an ad hoc committee of African and American artists and scholars.

Films from Africa and the African Diaspora
Welcome to the ArtMattan Productions' web site. We distribute films that focus on the human experience of black people in Africa, the Caribbean, North and South America and Europe

African Films:Annotated Index

African Films and Documentaries
Films and Documentaries by and about Women in Africa

African Films and Videos at Stanford
African Films and Videos at Stanford University

African Films
A resource library about African films including Senegal, Zimbabwe, Mali, and Ethiopia.

African Studies: Films and Videos

 

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