CAFF STAFF 2016
Founding Director: Dr Lindiwe Dovey
Festival Manager: Jenny Thornton
Curatorial Team: Estrella Sendra, Lindiwe Dovey, Mike Boyd & Advisory Board
Website Designer: Bill Thompson
CAFF Patron: Judy Kibinge
CAFF is honoured to announce Kenyan filmmaker Judy Kibinge as our patron.
“Ever since I was a child, I’ve loved to put pictures and words together. Its not surprising then, that my first career was advertising. As the fist non-expatriate Creative Director of an large East African multinational agency at McCann Erickson (1992 – December 1999) I created award winning adverts for multinationals like Coca-Cola North Africa Division (East/West/Central Africa & Islands), Unilever and East African Breweries. This was, I like to think, my film school. When I got tired of making adverts about brands that I believed less and less in, I quit my rather cushy job to try and make films. My first feature film Dangerous Affair made 2 years after quitting advertising was a contemporary film set in the heart of middle class Nairobi and is credited by some as having kicked off the wave of contemporary filmmaking in Kenya. This was preceded by a short, Aftermath, was successful at festivals around the world. Project Daddy was made in 2006 and in 2009 I wrote and directed a medium length stylish thriller based on a short graphic novel Killer Necklace for MNET New Directions, produced by my company Seven Productions. In 2013, I directed my third dramatic feature film Something Necessary which screened at the Toronto International Film Festival in September 2013. Despite some modest successes here and there, I still long to go to film school and learn more about my craft including cinematography skills that will free me to be more self-reliant and experimental. In 2013, I established DOCUBOX an East African Documentary Film Fund that aims to play a transformative role in the East African documentary film industry awarding film grants and mentoring to selected filmmakers. Right now we have six documentary films on our slate. In addition, we host monthly film screenings as well as master classes and workshops whenever we can. I love architecture, buildings and trees and if I could live life all over again, I would become an architect and work innovatively with old African building materials like mud, straw, clay, brick and even dung”.
DOCUMENTARIES
Coming of Age, (2008) Producer / Director / Writer 12 minute documentary for STEPS INTERNATIONAL
Peace Wanted Alive (2009) Producer / Director / Writer 45 Minute documentary – SEVEN PRODUCTIONS
Bless This Our Land (2006) Producer / Director / Writer – 30 minute documentary Director / Writer - Visual Edge
A Voice in the Dark - 8 min short on David Munyakei – Producer / Writer / Director - Visual Edge / Seven Productions
Headlines in History (2010) – Director / Writer - 60 minute – SEVEN PRODUCTIONS
Scarred – Anatomy of a Massacre (2015) – Director / Producer 60 minute documentary film - SEVEN PRODUCTIONS
FICTIONAL FILMS
The Aftermath (2002) Director / Writer – 30 Minute short MNET NEW DIRECTIONS
Dangerous Affair (2002) Director / Writer – BARAKA FILMS
Project Daddy (2004) Director / Writer - Feature length romantic comedy –BARAKA FILMS
Killer Necklace (2009) Producer / Director / Writer - 40 minute film dramatic film – SEVEN PRODUCTIONS
Something Necessary (2011) Producer / Director / Writer 84 minute dramatic feature – ONE FINE DAY FILMS
Jenny Thornton (Festival Manager)
Jenny works closely with the Festival Director and supports the operational aspects of scheduling and planning the festival. This includes partnership building, community outreach, venue bookings and volunteer recruitment. Jenny has extensive experience of project managing a number of research and capacity building projects with partnered universities across Sub-Saharan Africa. She works at the University of Cambridge as Programme Manager of the African Partnership for Chronic Disease Research. Her passion for visual anthropology, ethnography and film began while she was studying for her MA in Geography and Social Anthropology at the University of St Andrews. Jenny is now resuming her academic studies, alongside full-time work and CAFF, as a part-time postgraduate Masters student of International Relations at the University of Cambridge.
CURATORS
Dr Lindiwe Dovey (Founding Director of CAFF)
Dr Lindiwe Dovey is a South African academic, film festival director, film curator, and filmmaker. She holds a permanent position as Senior Lecturer in African Film and Performance Arts at SOAS, University of London. She received her BA Honors from Harvard University in Film Production and Theory and English Literature in 2001, and her PhD from the University of Cambridge in African Cinema and Literature in 2005. Lindiwe has been founding, directing, and curating African film festivals in the UK since 2002, the year in which she co-founded the Cambridge African Film Festival (with Mark Mathuray, Georgina Horrell, James Suzman, and Rachel Giraudo). She directed the CAFF from 2003-2005, and again in 2009, and has played an ongoing role as Founding Director. In 2011, Lindiwe co-founded Film Africa, London’s African film festival, which she also co-directed (with Namvula Rennie) and curated in 2011 and 2012. Lindiwe has published widely on African film. Her book, African Film and Literature (Columbia University Press, 2009) won a Choice Outstanding Award, and her book Curating Africa in the Age of Film Festivals will be published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2015. From 2012-2015, Lindiwe has been the recipient of a Philip Leverhulme Prize.
Estrella Sendra
Estrella Sendra has been the CAFF Director in 2014 and 2015. She is a media researcher, filmmaker, and festival organiser. She is the director of the documentary film Témoignages de l’autre côté, about Senegalese migration to Spain, which was awarded the European Charlemagne Youth Prize 2011 for its challenge to stereotypical representations of Africa, as well as Diabel Cissokho: the story of a Griot (2014) and has recently finished her third documentary in co-direction with Mariama Badji, Témoignages … “waa suñu gaal” (2016). She was involved in Film Africa 2012 and 2013, and in the African Film Festival of Cordoba-FCAT in Spain, where she was the Head of the International Media Office in 2013. She holds a BA in Media, Film and Journalism; an MA in Critical Media and Cultural Studies; and she is currently on her second year of her PhD on Senegalese cultural festivals at SOAS, University of London from September 2014, with a scholarship from the Department of African Languages and Cultures. She has worked as a teacher of Media and Film Studies at the University Foundation Programme (David Game College, London) as well as Marketing Officer for Francophone Africa. She continues to work as a journalist, publishing in magazines specialised in African cultures, such as Wiriko and Le Soleil.
Michael Boyd
Michael Boyd was Director of the Cambridge African Film Festival from 2011 - 2013. Michael grew up in Zimbabwe and Botswana, and graduated with a BA in Film Studies from Kent, before settling in Cambridge. He has worked at various film festivals, including Telluride, Sundance, Film Africa and interned in the acquisitions department at Dogwoof Pictures. Michael continues to work in the programming and submissions team at the Cambridge Film Festival and the Jozi Film Festival, where he sits on the jury. He was a founding member and Communications Manager for Take One, the official review publication for the Cambridge Film Festival, at which he worked for seven years. Michael returned to South Africa in 2013, where he took his passion and love of film into the classroom, becoming involved in education - earning his PGCE at the University of the Witwatersrand, and working as an English teacher in Johannesburg, and later within the Royal Bafokeng Nation. In 2016, Michael took an opportunity to relocate to Kenya, where he now teaches in Nairobi - continuing film work from a distance.
Modupe Otesanya
Graduating with a degree in Communications and Visual Culture from Guildhall University, and a Diploma in Finance and Accounts, Modupe is a researcher, social entrepreneur and a media licensing and partnership professional, working across public and private sector assignments. With an astute understanding of what makes cross-cultural dialogue projects successful, she has carved out a career as a project strategist, delivering solutions to clients on a local and international level. Including brokering joint-headline tours, concerts, exhibitions, and campaign strategies. She was instrumental in brokering the successful transfer of Tony award-winning Broadway musical Fela! and the 50 plus crew and cast members production from New York to Lagos. At Sanya Films, where she is able to marry her passion of culture and education, she continues to promote innovative contemporary films emerging from Africa and the Diaspora to exhibitors, knowledge institutions and the public. Modupe is also a freelance footage and archive researcher. Having recently completed archive research and clearance on soon to be released feature film, October 1st - directed by Kunle Afolayan. She is currently working on a documentary following the eminent philosopher, V.Y. Mudimbe. Modupe is an archive associate at the Black Cultural Archive Museum and Alumni at the Institute of Cultural Diplomacy.
ADVISORY BOARD
Dr Tony Jones
Dr Tony Jones has been involved in cinema development and programming since 1968, when he founded an independent cinema, The Arts Lab, in Birmingham. He moved on to become Programming Manager for the Arts Cinema in Cambridge in 1978, which he then established as the leading art house outside of London. Tony Jones also co-founded the UK’s leading independent cinema operator City Screen Limited in 1989, starting with a programming contract for the Maltings Cinema in Ely and the purchase of the Phoenix Cinema in Oxford. Tony has been an active support of CAFF since its inception in 2002. Tony resigned from City Screen in 2012. He is the Director, Co-founder and Trustee of Cambridge Film Trust, with particular responsibility for the programming and content of the Cambridge Film Festival. In October 2013 he was awarded an honorary Doctorate of the Arts by Anglia Ruskin University.
Angèle Diabang
Angèle Diabang debuted as editor before directing her first short film ‘Mon Beau Sourire’ , screened at over 50 festivals.
She was the founder of the Production Company Karoninka, in 2006, and she has directed several documentaries such as ‘Sénégalaises et Islam’, in 2007, ‘Yandé Codou: La griotte de Senghor’, in 2008, and ‘Congo: un médecin pour saver les femmes’, in 2014. She is currently working on her first feature length film, adapting the acclaimed novel by Senegalese writer Mariama Bâ, ‘So Long a Letter’. Angèle Diabang is also one of the three associates of the French Society of Production ‘Les films du paquebot’. Other than directing her own films, she has produced a dozen of documentary and fiction films, which have been screened across the world. Her films have also been presented and awarded in big international film festivals.
Since 2014, Angèle Diabang is the President of the Executive Board (Conseil d’Administration) of the Collective Management Society of Copyright and related rights in Senegal.
Paula Beegan
Paula Beegan is currently Associate Director, Special Events at Human Rights Watch, overseeing an international portfolio of fundraising and cultivation events. Paula graduated from Trinity College, University of Cambridge before completing a Research Master in Film Studies in Paris. She worked for UNESCO coordinating a capacity-building programme for cultural enterprises in developing countries and later managed the Cambridge Film Trust, organising a year-round programme of screenings and special events, including the annual Cambridge Film Festival. During her time in Cambridge as a student and at the Film Trust, Paula worked on various editions of the Cambridge African Film Festival and now sits on the advisory board.
Theodore Menelik-Mfuni
Theodore Menelik-Mfuni is a sociologist and a Congolese citizen residing in Cambridge. His love for his country and its people led him to found Menelik Education in 2003, a charity working in the Democratic Republic of the Congo with a branch in Cambridge, UK. Menelik Education mainly works in the DRC, but also regionally and internationally. Its goals are to produce information, reflection and action on human sustainable development, national and international solidarity, human rights, gender equality, and others subjects. Since 2003, Theodore has also been working on issues related to education, health, and community empowerment. Theodore is a lecturer in Education and Development at the University of Cambridge Institute of Continuing Education and a visiting lecturer at the Institut Superieur de Statistique of Kinshasa (DRC). Menelik Education has been a Humanitarian Centre member since 2008 and Theodore was chosen to represent his fellow members on the Humanitarian Centre board of trustees in March 2014.
As one of Cambridge World Music and Arts propagandists, Theodore was responsible for bringing great World Musicians to Cambridge, such as Kanda Bongo Man, the Bundu Boys, Kekele, Anna Mudeka, Mose Fanfan, Kandido Fabre, Henry Fiol, 4 Etoiles, and Africando to name but a few. Theodore’s intervention made their rise in the region swifter. In 2009, Theodore’s organisation Menelik Education, partner with CAFF by putting on two special events during the festival. As a talent scout, producer, promoter, and a fighter against inequality, Theodore’s viewpoints are well-intentioned.
Dr. Joel Cabrita
Dr. Joel Cabrita is University Lecturer in World Christianities at the University of Cambridge. She writes and researches on transnational Christianity in Southern Africa, with a particular interest in the role of print-mediated performance in these religious communities (Text and Authority in the South African Nazaretha Church, CUP, 2014). Her current book tells the story of how a small American Midwestern faith healing group travelled across the Atlantic to become the single largest religious movement in Southern Africa. Joel is a long-term supporter and contributing member of CAFF, dating from her own student days in Cambridge.
Dr. Julie MacArthur
Dr. Julie MacArthur holds a PhD in African history from the University of Cambridge and has taught African history and culture at universities across Canada, the UK and East Africa. She currently holds posts as an Assistant Professor of African History and African Studies at the University of Toronto and as a Visiting Scholar with the Makerere Institute for Social Research in Kampala, Uganda. Julie has worked as a programming associate with the Toronto International Film Festival and Film Africa in London as well as serving as the Director of the Cambridge African Film Festival for several years. She is also the Director of Content Acquisition for Buni.TV, an online platform for the distribution of African content and she regularly curates film programmes and participates in film forums and festivals across the world.
Sarah Jones
After a childhood in Africa and Asia, Sarah studied politics and film at Cambridge University, the University of Cape Town, and Harvard University, and was Deputy Director of CAFF in 2005. Living in Cape Town, Sarah works as an independent filmmaker in collaboration with Team Tarbaby, a production company that produces films with a specific focus on identity and freedom. Umbilical Cords, Sarah’s first documentary, explored love and conflict between three pairs of transnational mothers and daughters (Durban International Film Festival, Encounters Documentary Film Festival, Film Africa 2012, the Cambridge African Film Festival, Zanzibar International Film Festival). Sarah is currently working on Mrs Popplestone (IDFA Most Promising Documentary Award 2012, Paris Project Award 2012, Produire Au Sud Award 2013), a documentary feature exploring how a blind woman experienced race under apartheid, and Ystervark, a fiction feature telling the love story between a Chinese shop worker and her Sotho partner. She also freelances for Sea Monster, South Africa’s pre-eminent animation and gaming studios.
Dr Sebastiana Etzo
Sebastiana Etzo holds a PhD in African Studies from the Istituto Universitario Orientale, University of Naples, and has extensively studied the problems of inequality, socio-economic rights and social movements in sub-Saharan Africa. She currently works in international development, focussing on women and reproductive health.
Sebastiana has been involved in the organisation of Film Africa in London in 2011, 2012 and 2013; and in 2015 supported the Cambridge African Film Festival as Head of Media Office. Following her passion for cinema and research, she made her first documentary film in 2014.
Dr Devon Curtis
Devon Curtis is a University Senior Lecturer in the Department of Politics and International Studies at the University of Cambridge and a Fellow of Emmanuel College. Her main research interests and publications deal with power-sharing and governance arrangements following conflict, UN peacebuilding, non-state armed movements in Africa, and critical perspectives on conflict, peacebuilding, and development. Her field research concentrates on the Great Lakes region of Africa, especially Burundi, Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Previously, Devon worked for the Canadian government and the United Nations Staff College, and she has been a consultant for the UK Department for International Development, the Overseas Development Institute, and a Visiting Senior Advisor to the International Peace Institute. She has had fellowships at the Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies at Columbia University, and at the Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC) at Stanford University.