K E E P O N M OV I N G K E E P O N M OV I N G AFRICA IN MOTION
As the annual fi lm festival of stories from the African continent returns for its 14th year, Arusa Qureshi explores some of this year’s Africa in Motion highlights
S cotland’s major celebration of African cinema is back for its 14th edition, presenting audiences in Glasgow and Edinburgh with a range of stories from the African continent and beyond. From documentaries through to coming-of-age dramas, Africa in Motion has screened over 600 fi lms since its inception in 2006, continuing to highlight the diversity and talent within African cinema.
The 2019 edition of the festival is no exception, with screenings, discussions, Q&As, pop-ups, workshops, exhibitions, live performances and much more taking place over the nine days. As far as the festival’s acclaimed curation goes, Africa in Motion has been working to develop a unique approach in recent years, which has resulted in this year’s programme featuring a team of 14 paid curators, all People of Colour (PoC), coming from Scotland, Morocco, Brazil, Cameroon and Rwanda, each contributing to the programme in various ways. The signifi cance of this lies in its truly collaborative spirit, which means that the programme is able to cater to an array of audiences thanks in part to the varying perspectives and viewpoints of the curators.
Highlights from this year’s programme include brand new features, documentaries and shorts, plus a highly intriguing strand entitled Playful Decolonisation, which includes the UK’s fi rst expansive video games and VR fi lm
exhibition solely dedicated to work developed on the African continent. The video games will focus on three areas: narrative, gameplay and aesthetic, each looking at ways in which the games challenge Western conventions. The VR fi lms that will be exhibited offer immersive modes of African storytelling and experience, via both science fi ction and reality. Elsewhere in the programme, you’ll fi nd screenings of fi lms like Mercy of the Jungle (Joël Karekezi, Rwanda 2019), which was the winner of the top prize at Africa’s biennale FESPACO’s fi lm festival this year; western- style feature Sew the Winter to My Skin (Jahmil XT Qubeka, South Africa 2018), which dramatises the true story of a notorious outlaw from apartheid era South Africa; and Desrances (Apolline Traoré, Burkina Faso 2019), starring renowned French-Haitian actor Jimmy Jean-Louis in Traoré’s dramatic thriller. In the documentary strand, Talking About Trees (Suhaib Gasmelbari, Sudan 2019) wistfully chronicles the demise of cinema in Sudan, while Lost Warrior (Nasib Farah & Søren Steen Jespersen, Denmark/Sweden 2018) follows the story of a young Somali man who grew up in Britain, was radicalised and joined al-Shabab. My Friend Fela (Joel Zito Araújo, Brazil 2019) explores the complex life of Nigerian musician Fela Kuti through
conversations with his friend and offi cial biographer, Carlos Moore. This year’s programme also places a special focus on Afrofuturism through fi lms like Earth Mother, Sky Father: 2030 (Kordae Jatafa Henry, Democratic Republic of Congo 2019) and Afrofuturist musical EUPhoria (Robert- Jonathan Koeyers, Curaçao 2018), in which a mysterious forcefi eld appears around the African continent. Films refl ecting the global African diaspora will be well represented too, with movies like Sprinter (Storm Saulter, Jamaica 2019) and Bakoso: Afrobeats of Cuba (Eli Jacobs-Fantauzzi, USA 2019) making appearances, alongside Within Our Gates (Oscar Micheaux, US 1920), a silent fi lm with live musical accompaniment, made by the fi rst African American director as a response to DW Griffi th’s racist The Birth of a Nation.
There’s no doubt that Africa in Motion will continue to encourage aspiring fi lmmakers and work to impact underrepresentation and marginalisation in British fi lm, while also introducing Scottish audiences to the brilliance of African cinema. Keep an eye out for the full programme announcement on Mon 23 Sep.
Africa in Motion, various venues, Glasgow & Edinburgh, Fri 25 Oct–Sun 3 Nov, africa-in-motion.org.uk
Clockwise from top: Sew the Winter to My Skin; Zombies; Lost Warrior; Earth Mother, Sky Father; Sprinter 1 Sep–31 Oct 2019 THE LIST 41