Films About Africa at Durban International Film Fest The 37th edition of the Durban International Fi
Films About Africa at Durban International Film Fest The 37th edition of the Durban International FilmFestival (DIFF2016), which took place from June 16-26, recently wrapped up ten days of screening a range of exciting films and documentaries, introducing a diverse selection of homegrown and international works and stories to local audiences. This list consists of several films shown at DIFF2016 with narratives that relate to realities on the Africancontinent. The JournymenTakingplace in 2014, marking two decades since the end of apartheid and the changingof South Africa’s political system, The Journeymen documentary follows three young SouthAfrican photographers from different walks of life as they travel 24,000kmthrough the country in a motorhome, capturing the nation’s “promising,contentious and confusing present-day democracy”. Acquiringfootage using Go Pros strapped to their chests, Sipho Mpongo,who interviewed about his participation in this project, accompanied by fellowphotographers Wikus de Wet, and Sean Metelerkamp, from contrasting cultural andracial backgrounds - Xhosa, Afrikaans and English respectively, find themselveslearning about the country they call home and even more about themselves asyoung South Africans. The film served as the festival’s opening film on June16th, marking Youth Day in the country.NawaraNawara lives between two worlds - her world spent in her poverty-stricken neighborhood, and a life spent working in and admiring the lives of Cairo’s more privileged. In Hala Khalil’s thrilling drama, the seedy underbelly of class and power, and the unkept promises of the Egyptian Revolution of 2011, are brought to light through Nawara’s misery and problem filled life.KalushiAfter hawker SolomanKalushi Mahlangu has a run in with police that leaves him badly beaten, rattled and enraged by the brutality he suffered, Soloman makes his way from his home in Mamelodi to the outskirts of nearby Angola where he and his friend and comrade Mondy undergo military training with the anti-apartheid liberation movement there. Back in South Africa, more trouble finds the two men as Mondy commits murder and both face charges of double homicide. Tried in an unforgiving apartheid court, Kalushi focuses on the stifling injustices of South Africa’s racial past. NakomDeath is often seen as a form of passage fromthis life to the next, a journey from the old to the new. However, for medicalstudent Iddrisu, the death of his father sends him back to his ‘old’world, the past he sought to leave behind as he embarked on a new life inbustling Kumasi. Back home for the burial, Iddrisu is forced to deal with theclashes of his two lives in which serious sacrifices and responsibilities mustbe considered.We Have Never Been KidsScreenedat several film festivals, and with a number of awards under its belt, Egyptianfilmmaker Mahmood Soliman’s We Have Never Been Kids is both a personal and political reflection oflife in Cairo over the past decade. A follow-up to his 2003 documentary Living Among Us, the film is a view into the city through thelife of Nadia and her family.Lost TongueDavisonMudzingwa Lost Tongue is the story of Helena Steenkamp, a Khomani San woman fromthe Kalahari, and her mission to revive and preserve her people’s endangeredN!uu language, and the challenges and confrontations with history and thepresent whilst on her quest.As I Open My Eyes (A peine j’ouvre les yeux)If Farrah is sure of one thing, it is that she wants to sing. More specifically,Farrah wants to be a singer in a band. However, as she indulges in a lifestyle that exposes her to the dangers of living out her own personal revolution, many things become uncertain for Farrah as delicate things begin to unfold all around her. Representing the lost hopes of the post-Jasmine Revolution youth, Farrah falls somewhere between a rebel with a cause and a carefree young woman caught between greater conflicts of idealism and resistance.Much LovedThrough the friendship of four women who happen to be sex workers, French-Moroccan filmmaker Nabil Ayouch’s feature film Much Loved casts a harsh but necessary light on the country’s illicit sex trade that contradicts the country’s conservative politics and values.The UnseenWith The Unseen, filmmaker Perivi Katjavivi’s poeticportrayals of three individuals’ existential crises whilst living in Namibiaserve as a window into struggles relating to history, culture, identity,depression, and other ‘unseen’ and unspoken “emotional and physicalrealities of post-colonial Namibia”.The March of the White ElephantsFive years after hosting the first FIFA WorldCup on the African continent, and with this year marking Brazil’s turn athosting, both South Africa and the global governing body of the world’s mostpopular sport were put into the spotlight again, this time for reasons relatingto the criminal and unethical misconduct of the two in the assigning andhandling of the tournament. Beyond the tournament itself, the direct andside effects of crime and corruption unfold in this poignant documentary asfilmmaker Craig Tanner uses the South African-hosted 2010 FIFA World Cup, aswell as the preparations for the upcoming World Cup in Brazil, to reveal thenegative impacts of this highly profitable tournament. -- source link