Africa Is a Country

The New York African Film Festival

The New York African Film Festival

By
Sean Jacobs

The New York African Film Festival was just voted the fourth best festival in the city–no mean feat.

The 17th edition of the festival kicks of later this week at Lincoln Center and a few other venues around New York City.  Highlights include Oliver Hermanus’ claustrophobic “Shirley Adams,” about a mother in a coloured township in Cape Town caring for her ungrateful son who is paralyzed. (I had to review the film for the festival. Hermanus is definitely going places.) There’s also “Streetball,” about the homeless World Cup, the comedy “White Wedding” (picture above), “Bronx Princess,” about Ghanaian immigrants in New York City, and a film about Che Guevara’s Congolese translator.

I’ll be there a few times–among others, I will interview the filmmakers, Monique Mbeka Phoba and Guy Kabeya Muya, after a screening of their film, “Between the Cup and the Elections,” (a beautiful film about Zaire’s 1974 World Cup football team).

For the schedule and information about the films, click here.

Further Reading

No one should be surprised we exist

The documentary film, ‘Rolé—Histórias dos Rolezinhos’ by Afro-Brazilian filmmaker Vladimir Seixas uses sharp commentary to expose social, political, and cultural inequalities within Brazilian society.

Kenya’s stalemate

A fundamental contest between two orders is taking place in Kenya. Will its progressives seize the moment to catalyze a vision for social, economic, and political change?

More than a building

The film ‘No Place But Here’ uses VR or 360 media to immerse a viewer inside a housing occupation in Cape Town. In the process, it wants to challenge gentrification and the capitalist logic of home ownership.