This year the Cambridge African Film Festival (CAFF), which was directed for the second consecutive year by Estrella Sendra, focused on the intertwining themes of love, music and resistance. The programme showcased nine fiction films, two short films and two documentary films coming from Algeria, Burkina Faso, Egypt, Ethiopia, Kenya, Senegal, South Africa and Sudan. It also featured Q&As with experts, workshops, live music, and a tribute to Senegalese filmmaker Ousmane Sembène.
About “From Africa, with Love”
“From Africa, With Love” was a programme of African cinema that took place from October 2015 to November 2015 across the UK, as part of the BFI LOVE Blockbuster Season, in partnership with Plusnet, which sought to present a number of both classic and contemporary films about romantic love on the African continent. The programme was a collaborative effort between the five African film festivals in the UK: Africa in Motion (AiM) Film Festival in Scotland; Film Africa in London; Afrika Eye in Bristol; Watch-Africa in Wales; and the Cambridge African Film Festival (CAFF), with Africa in Motion taking responsibility for administering the logistics and finances of the project. The project came about as a means to augment and diversify the wider Love Blockbuster programme by presenting a number of films within the programmes of the five film festivals, as well as making these films available to other venues and hubs during the Love season. Through a collaborative programming process, we selected 8 African films that focused on the theme of love in a variety of ways, and grouped these into three overarching themes:
LOVE BREWED IN AN AFRICAN POT
This theme sought to rekindle date night in a romantic dine-and-view setting. Films that were screened in this strand included:
-Jenna Cato Bass’ quirky Love the One You Love (South Africa, 2014)
-Hermon Hailay’s Price of Love (Ethiopia, 2015)
LOVE IN CONFLICT
This strand looked at love in times of adversity, and included:
-Mark Dornford-May’s Breathe Umphefumlo (South Africa, 2015)
-Miklas Manneke’s Kanyekanye (South Africa, 2013)
ROMANTIC VIEWS
This strand explored the cultural perceptions and interpretations of love across Africa, looking at religion, class, tradition and the collision with modernity, and the unique place of love in African life, manifested in marriage, dowries, courting rituals, and the challenges of unconventional love. Films included:
-Djibril Diop Mambety’s Hyenas (Senegal, 1992)
-Youssef Chahine’s Cairo Station (Egypt, 1958)
-Jim Chuchu’s Stories of our Lives (2014)
-Zeze Gamboa’s O Grand Kilapy (Angola, 2012)
Overall, the programme was very successful. In particular, all of the Dine and View events across the five festivals were sold-out and much enjoyed by attendees. A number of other screenings saw significant audience turnout, while some screenings struggled to get audiences. This is not unexpected as these kinds of African films do not usually have a large viewership, and although positive developments in this regard can be witnessed in some of the more successful events of this programme, achieving consistently good attendance is part of a longer-term project of developing reliable audiences. The programme also saw the successful collaboration of the five African film festivals in a way that works towards the strengthening of the network for future initiatives, and which was developed previously through the BFI-funded South African film tour last year. The longer-term impact of the programme saw the successful exposure of African cinema to UK audiences in order to continue developing an interest in and demand for African cinema amongst UK audiences.
The five participating film festivals have worked extensively in their respective regions in recent years to increase this demand, and believe firmly that there is room for expansion. This “From Africa, With Love” project facilitated the reaching of audiences with an interest in the theme of ‘love’, who may not ordinarily have a specific interest in African film. This expanded the festivals’ reach beyond their typical viewership and contributed to overcoming the marginalisation of African cinema in UK film culture going forward.
CAFF benefitted greatly from taking part in this collaborative project, as not only did it enrich the programme with a large number of screenings that would not have been otherwise funded, but it also provided enjoyable parallel events, such as the already mentioned ‘Dine & View’.
As part of this section, CAFF screened five titles, including South African fiction film Love the One you Love (2014, Jenna Cato Bass), as the opening night film, followed by a wine and food reception with live music with Tanzanian singer Kyazin Lugangira; the classic Egyptian film Cairo Station (1958, Youssef Chahine); the award-winning Ethiopian film Price of Love (2014, Hermon Hailay) in a romantic ‘Dine & View’ setting, co-organised with Menelik Education; the Kenyan film Stories of Our Lives (2014, Jim Chuchu); and O Grande Kilapy (2012, Angola-Portugal, Zézé Gamboa), a rarely shown Lusophone film which does not just revolve around love, but also music and resistance. Since the year 2015 also marked the 40th anniversary of independence in the five African Portuguese-speaking countries, the latter film was selected for the closing evening of the festival, followed by an African fashion show hosted by Congolese model Lisette Mibo’s charity Passion for Motherland, and a concert by Senegalese band Abdoulaye Samb & Minnjiaraby.
Read our CAFF 2015 for much more information!
Read our MEDIA Book to see the media coverage of our festival, including BBC Cambridge, Cambridge TV, and international publications.
Watch some videos of CAFF 2015 in our Vimeo Channel.
See all photos in our Flickr.
See you in CAFF 2016! More news regarding the next edition soon!
