The Cambridge African Film Festival (CAFF) is very proud to be celebrating its 14th edition from 16 to 24 October 2015. We are honoured to have become an important part of the cultural agenda in the city of Cambridge, and are grateful to all our supporters.
CAFF is the longest-running annual African film festival in the UK. Since 2002, CAFF has been screening some of the best contemporary and classic African films; increasing knowledge and awareness of African and black culture in the East of England; and providing African filmmakers with large and engaged audiences. The festival has always been completely voluntarily run by a group of people who are passionate about African film.
CAFF 2015’s themes are love, music and resistance and the programme will showcase nine fiction films, two short films and two documentary films coming from Algeria, Burkina Faso, Egypt, Ethiopia, Kenya, Senegal, South Africa and Sudan. It will also feature Q&As with filmmakers and experts, workshops, live music, and a tribute to Senegalese filmmaker Ousmane Sembène.
This 14th edition of the festival has been supported by prestigious institutions such as the Smuts Memorial Fund, Trinity College, the Centre of African Studies (University of Cambridge), the Cambridge Arts Picturehouse and the Cambridge Film Trust. CAFF 2015 is also part of an African film series exploring the theme of ‘love’, called ‘From Africa, With Love’, in collaboration with the four other African film festivals that exist in the UK: Africa in Motion (AiM) Film Festival in Scotland, Film Africa in London, Afrika Eye in Bristol, and Watch-Africa in Wales, in association with the the BFI UK Audience Network’s LOVE Blockbuster Season.
CAFF 2015 is also delighted to count on partnerships with many more Cambridge-based institutions and organisations, such as the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Menelik Education, the African Society of Cambridge University, the Eastern African Society of Cambridge University, the French Studies Society of Trinity College, the Festival of Ideas, as well as Passion for Motherland.
The festival will take place across different venues in Cambridge, such as the Cambridge Arts Picturehouse, the Winstanley Lecture Theatre at Trinity College, and the Riley Auditorium at Clare College, among others.
Download the full festival programme here.
About ‘From Africa, With Love’
Last year CAFF was part of the wonderful ‘South Africa at 20: The Freedom Tour’ in partnership with all UK-based African film festivals. This year the BFI have generously provided the funding for us to join forces once again to put together a focus on love-themed films, which will take place during the festival period. We have selected three main strands: Love Brewed in the African Pot, with a ‘dine-and-view’ evening that will consist of a pop-up restaurant in which festival participants will watch prize-winning Ethiopian film Price of Love (2014, Ethiopia, Hermon Hailay) while enjoying Ethiopian food. This event will be organised in partnership with Menelik Education. Price of Love won the Bi Kidude Award (Chairman’s Award) at Zanzibar International Film Festival 2015, and Best Film, Best Actor and Best Actress at Panafrican Film Festival, Cannes 2015. As part of the Love in conflict strand, which focuses on how love can overcome adversity in situations of conflict, CAFF will be hosting the screening of Kenyan film Stories of Our Lives (2014, Kenya, Jim Chuchu) with a series of short films dealing with different aspects of love among the LGBT community. The film will be preceded by experimental animated short filmYellow Fever (2012, Kenya, Ngendo Mukii), which explores the effects of Eurocentric beauty ideals, as disseminated by mainstream media. The other title in this strand will be The Great Kilapy (2012, Angola-Portugal, Zézé Gamboa). This rarely shown Lusophone film does not just revolve around love, but also around music and resistance. In addition, 2015 marks the 40th anniversary of post-colonisation among the five African countries with Portuguese as their official language. These are the reasons why CAFF has chosen this film for the festival closing. The evening will be followed by live music and a mini African fashion-show hosted by Congolese model Lisette Mibo’s charity Passion for Motherland, at the bar in Clare College. Finally, as part of the third strand Romantic views, showing different cultural interpretations of love across Africa, CAFF will be opening with South African fiction film Love the One you Love (2014, South Africa, Jenna Cato Bass), and the classic Egyptian film Cairo Station (1958, Youssef Chahine).
About the Music and Resistance theme
CAFF 2015 will coincide in dates with part of the well-established Festival of Ideas in the city of Cambridge. Since this year’s focus is ‘Power and Resistance’ and it aims to ‘question everything’, we consider it essential to be part of it. CAFF will thus bring an extraordinary title to the Festival: Sudanese documentary Beats of the Antonov (2014, Sudan-South Africa, Hajooj Kuka). Awarded best documentary at the Durban International Film Festival 2015 and the African Film Festival of Cordoba-FCAT 2015, and the people’s choice documentary award at the Toronto International Film Festival, this film is about how people of the Blue Nile and Nuba Mountains in Sudan resist the situation created by the civil war through music.The screening will be followed by a Q&A via skype with Hajooj Kuka and possibly a participant in the documentary, in conversation with Dr Sharath Srinivasan, director of the Centre of Governance and Human Rights (CGHR) and lecturer at King’s College, University of Cambridge.
Other than the Lusophone title in commemoration of the 40th anniversary of independence, with the multi-layered resistance featuring The Great Kilapy, CAFF will be hosting a political screening of Algerian historical fiction film The Man from Oran, about the first euphoric years following the Independence of Algeria. This film will be followed by a Q&A with Lyes Salem, filmmaker and main character of the film, in conversation with Dr Jean Khalfa, from Trinity College (University of Cambridge).
Tribute to Sembène
CAFF 2015 seeks to highlight the work of acclaimed African filmmakers who have been a source of inspiration in cinema production in the continent. One such filmmaker is Ousmane Sembène (1923-2007), from Senegal. His biographer and friend Samba Gadjigo has recently made a biographical documentary, Sembène! (2015, USA-Senegal, Samba Gadjigo & Jason Silverman), which we are delighted to be able to screen. Since in this documentary Sembène’s fiction film Black Girl (1966) plays a key role, and since it is the 50th anniversary since it was made, we will also be screening this film, which many consider the first fiction feature film to be made by a sub-Saharan African.
Book launch
We are delighted to be hosting the UK book launch of Curating Africa in the Age of Film Festivals (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015) by CAFF’s founding director, Dr Lindiwe Dovey. Lindiwe will be present to share a glass of wine and tell us about the book, which began its journey at the Cambridge African Film Festival. The book offers the first scholarly exploration of the vital yet controversial role played by film festivals in curating particular versions of Africa, African film, African filmmakers, and African audiences. It takes us on a festive, historical tour, analysing the curation of Africans at the world fairs, the contemporary curation of African film and African filmmakers at film festivals, and the proliferation of international film festivals across Africa today.
African women filmmakers
CAFF has always been committed to highlighting the work and talent of African women directors. This year we are excited to be offering a screening programme called ‘Experiments with love: young South African women filmmakers’ with films by Nobunye Levin, Nikki Comninos, and Jyoti Mistry, and with introductions by Lindiwe Dovey and reflections from Sara Blecher. These films complement others in the CAFF 2015 programme, such as Love the One You Love (Jenna Cato Bass) and Ayanda (Sara Blecher). In the past few years, South Africa has witnessed a dynamic new film movement, led by young women of all races, who are experimenting with the film medium to seek new ways of figuring South Africa’s past and present. What further binds these films is their attachment to questions of intimacy, interiors, and love: familial love, fraternal love, romantic love. CAFF 2015 is thus screening a total of seven films directed by African women filmmakers, with Sara Blecher as our guest.
CAFF Family Day
In aiming to change the perception of the African continent and to showcase its diversity, CAFF believes it is essential to change the narrative from an early age. This is why we will be hosting an afternoon family screening, with Ethiopian film Lamb (2015, Ethiopian, Yared Zeleke, 94 min.), after Burkinabé short film Les Jumeaux de Samba (2014, Burkina Faso, Lazare Palé, 11 min.). These screenings will be preceded by an activity for children at the Museum of Anthropology and Archaeology in Cambridge. This small-group sized workshop for children will provide an introduction to the diversity of Ethiopia through experiencing the tastes, textures, sights, sounds and smells associated with the country. Brought to us by husband and wife team, Lideya Teshome, who is Ethiopian born and bred; and Michael Thomas, a PhD candidate researching cinema in Ethiopia, this workshop offers the opportunity for children and parents alike to learn about Ethiopia through this multi-sensual experience.
Parallel events at CAFF 2015
Other than ‘Dine and View’, ‘Experiments with love: young South African women filmmakers’, ‘Book launch’ and ‘CAFF Family Day’, CAFF 2015 will be offering live music hosted by ‘Calabash’ and Menelik Education during its closing. The closing event will also feature a mini fashion show by Passion for Motherland.
CAFF is very grateful to all the volunteers, organisations and filmmakers that make this festival possible.
We are looking forward to welcoming you to CAFF 2015!
Estrella Sendra
CAFF Director 2015
