New York African Film Festival, April 9 –15, 2008

via the Film Society of Lincoln Center site:

the fifteenth New York African Film Festival
April 9 –15, 2008

We are honored to welcome Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka and veteran film director Charles Burnett to receptions during the festival.

The New York African Film Festival (NYAFF) celebrates its 15th anniversary with a lineup of 40 films from 22 countries throughout Africa and the African Diaspora, emphasizing history and storytelling, technology and the future. In a compelling array of features, shorts and documentaries, as well as experimental film and archival footage, the festival selects from treasured stories of the past, as well as contextualizes the present and future within the framework of history. The Festival is also showcasing works by a new wave of female African cineastes. Through eye witness accounting, social activism and pure fiction, Osvalde Lewat-Hallade, Ngozi Onwurah, Katy Léna Ndiaye, Zina Saro Wiwa and other female filmmakers challenge and question the taboo traditions of the Continent and the Black community at large.

“Cinema is such an important medium for Africans, as it functions to both preserve the oral tradition and to act as a vehicle to bring Africa’s voice to the world stage,” said Mahen Bonetti, founder and executive director of the AFF. “The rapid advances in the field of media technologies is presenting the people of Africa and the African Diaspora more opportunities than ever before to dictate the terms of their destiny and to tell their stories on their own terms.” [read more]

Click here for the schedule and film descriptions.

The festival continues at FIAF,   French Institute Alliance Francaise on May 6, 13, 20 & 27, and at BAMCinématek, May 23–26.

Pictured above (l-r):
Ezra
Director: Newton I. Aduaka, Release: 2007, Runtime: 110

This is My Africa screening with Fantôme Afrique
Zina Saro-Wiwa, African continent/Nigeria/UK, 2008; Runtime: 55

The African Slave Trades:Across the Indian Ocean
Director: Diane Seligsohn & Richard Rein, Country: USA, Release: 2007, Runtime: 26