Hello there! My name is Sarah Mayersohn and I am interning at the BFC/A as part of my coursework for my master’s in library science at the School of Library and Information Science, Indiana University-Bloomington. One of my primary duties is processing African movie posters into the archive’s FESPACO collection, and I’ve noticed that there are some really fascinating films that deserve attention. In this seven-part blog series, I will be highlighting a number of films that we have in the poster collection.
Female filmmakers are a minority around the world, including Africa. Fortunately, the status of female directors has been rising over the past decade in African cinema due to wide acclaim for their films.
Monica Wangu Wamwere: The Unbroken Spirit by Jane Murago-Munene, Kenya (2011) –Jane Murago-Munene’s documentary tells the story of Mama Koigi, the mother of human rights activist and politician Koigi wa Wamwere, who was a political prisoner in Kenya. She was involved in various efforts to campaign for the release of political prisoners, such as the 1992 Mothers’ Hunger strike, and successfully led efforts to have her son released. This is a great example of how film can bring attention to largely unknown African women and how involved women can be in the African filmmaking industry. In fact, the director is also the founder of CineArts Afrika in 1990 and chairperson of the Kenya National Film Association and Eastern Africa regional secretary of FEPACI (the Pan-African Federation of Filmmakers).
La Nuit de la vérité (Night of Truth) by Fanta Regina Nacro, Burkina Faso (2004) – Fanta Regina Nacro is possibly the best known female director to hail from Burkina Faso today. She received a master’s degree in film and audiovisual studies at the Sorbonne and has been in the film industry since the early 1990s. La Nuit de la vérité is her first full-length feature after years of directing shorts such as Puk Nini (1996). This film is set in a fictional West African country that has been in a civil war for a decade when the two sides decide to make efforts towards peace in their country. However, things don’t always go as smoothly as they would like…
Black Camera 3.1 Published!
In partnership with IU Press, Black Camera Volume 3, Issue 1 has arrived!
Featuring the provocative art work of Adele Stephenson on the front and back cover as well as the poster gallery, the latest edition to the journal includes an interview with Stanley Nelson on the occasion of the screening of Freedom Riders at IU Cinema; articles by Robert J. Patterson, Akin Adesokan, Lesley Marx, and Emma Hamilton & Troy Saxby; as well as interesting book reviews, articles on FESPACO, and documents.
THIS WEEKEND AT THE BFC/A: Documentaries on Sara Gómez & Ousmane Sembene
Stop by the Black Film Center/Archive this weekend for two exciting screenings.
On Friday, October, 14 at 2:00 pm, we’re wrapping up our Hispanic Heritage Month program with the 2005 documentary on Afro-Cuban filmmaker Sara Gómez, Where is Sara Gómez. Watch an extract of it HERE.
On Sunday, October 16 at 5:00 pm, Graduate Students in African Studies will present Manthia Diawara & Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s 1994 documentary, Sembene: the Making of African Cinema. This screening kicks off a week of events celebrating the 50th anniversary of African Studies at IU, culminating with a keynote address by Diawara.
Home Movie Day – Oct 15 @ IU Cinema
Home Movie Day returns to Indiana University this Saturday October 15, from 3-5 pm at the IU Cinema.
Home Movie Day is an international celebration of the power and meaning of home movies and amateur film while also highlighting the importance of everyday filmmaking as a historical resource. Local residents have the opportunity to bring in their home movies and share them with the community.
Home Movie Day is celebrated around the world, so be part of an international movement to recognize these films as valuable examples of local, regional, national and international history. This year, in conjunction with the move of the event into the wonderful IU Cinema, we will be screening a number of films from various archives on the IU Campus, including the Black Film Center/Archive, the Kinsey Institute, and the IU Archives.
This event is free and open to the public. The IU Cinema can screen 8mm, 16mm, DVD, and VHS formats. We invite you to come and have a great time sharing the home videos of your fellow community members at the IU Cinema.
For any further information, please contact James Paasche at jpaasche@indiana.edu.
John Akomfrah's Films in NYC
Black Audio Film Collective co-founder John Akomfrah’s latest film, The Nine Muses, opened at the MOMA this past weekend. One more screening is scheduled for Wednesday, October 12 at 4:30. Click HERE for more info.
You can also see two of Akomfrah’s previous films, Seven Songs for Malcolm X (1993) and The Last Angel of History (1997), at the Maysles Institute through Sunday, October 16. Purchase tickets HERE. For a New York Times review of these two films, click HERE.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xegOksDquyo]
The (W)rap-Sheet 2.3
PEDRO COSTA: October 8 @ IU Cinema
In Vanda’s Room – 2000: 3:00pm
Drama, Foreign Language
With the intimate feel of a documentary and the texture of a Vermeer painting, Pedro Costa’s In Vanda’s Room takes an unflinching, fragmentary look at a handful of self-destructive, marginalized people, but is centered around the heroin-addicted Vanda Duarte. (35mm. Portuguese language with English subtitles.)
Ne Change Rien – 2009: 6:30pm
Documentary, Foreign Language
Ne Change Rien was born from the friendship uniting French actress and singer Jeanne Balibar, sound engineer Philippe Morel, and Pedro Costa. The film captures Balibar from rehearsals to recording sessions, from concerts to classical singing lessons, from the attic in Saintes Marie-aux-Mines to the stage of a Tokyo café, from Johnny Guitar to Offenbach’s La Perichole. (35mm. Portuguese language with English subtitles.)
Where Does Your Hidden Smile Lie? – 2001: 9:30pm
Documentary, Foreign Language
Pedro Costa captures this great portrait of Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet at work while they were re-editing the third version of Sicilia! at the Studio National des Arts Contemporains in Le Fresnoy. The film is a work of friendship and dedication and a lesson in cinema. (35mm. Portuguese language with English subtitles.)
PEDRO COSTA: October 7 @ IU Cinema
Shorts Program (2001-2007): 3:00pm
Foreign Language
Jonathan Rosenbaum of the Chicago Reader suggests,“Costa’s films are the cinema of the future, partly becauseof their intimate scale. As we get to know them better,they steadily grow in stature.” As we get to know Costa’s feature films, it is important to also see the shorts, in which the people and sites in Costa’s features become better acquainted. The series includes:
• 6 Bagatelas (2001)—Six unused scenes from Where Does Your Hidden Smile Lie? are put into a new context. (35mm. 18 min. Not rated. Portuguese language with English subtitles.)
• Ne change rien (2005)—Costa’s camera is captivated by the enigmatic French actress Jeanne Balibar, setting the stage for the feature of the same name. (35mm. 11 min. Not rated. Portuguese language with English subtitles.)
• Tarrafal (2007)—This short premiered at Cannes, as part of the collective film The State of the World, and returns to Cape Verde and a site where political dissidents were tortured and killed for 40 years. (35mm. 16 min. Not rated. Portuguese language with English subtitles.)
• The Rabbit Hunters (2007)—A semi-sequel to Colossal Youth, the film breaks down boundaries between the real and the surreal. (35mm. 23 min. Not rated. Portuguese language with English subtitles.)
Collosal Youth – 2006: 6:30pm
Drama, Foreign Language
Many of the lost souls of Ossos and In Vanda’s Room return in the spectral landscape of Colossal Youth, which brings to Pedro Costa’s Fontainhas films a new theatrical, tragic grandeur. This time, Costa focuses on Ventura, an elderly immigrant from Cape Verde living in Lisbon. (35 mm. Portuguese language with English subtitles.)
The Blood – 1989: 9:30pm
Drama, Foreign Language
In Pedro Costa’s first feature film, two teenagers and a young schoolteacher flee a malicious uncle and his gang of criminals. In an attempt to keep a secret, they decide to separate. Their separation introduces us to the soonto-be-familiar Costa trademarks: isolation, the trauma of displacement, absent parents, and surrogate families. Shot in haunting black and white, we are reminded of many early B pictures. If we look back to classical American cinema we find that same secret alliances that existed among Nicholas Ray’s young rebels, but these teenagers are not really rebels—they are merely thrust into bad situations. (35mm. 95 min. Not rated. Portuguese language with English subtitles.)
SIGN UP: Media-making Workshop for Teens with Akosua Adoma Owusu
Ghanaian-American filmmaker Akosua Adoma Owusu is offering a media-making workshop for teens in conjunction with the Hirshhorn Museum’s ARTLAB+. The workshop, Women Represented, will be held on Wednesday afternoons from October 5 – December 7. Participants will learn how to “read” what contemporary female artists have to say about being a woman today. They will also use video, photography, animation, and/or music and sound to create an artwork. Click HERE to register.
Check out Owusu’s 2007 short Intermittent Delight.
[vimeo http://www.vimeo.com/18611914 w=400&h=265]
Intermittent Delight from obibini pictures on Vimeo.
PEDRO COSTA: October 6 @ IU Cinema
Lecture with Pedro Costa: 3:00pm
Film Director Pedro Costa will be a Jorgensen Guest Lecturer on October 6th at 3pm in the IU Cinema. The lecture will be in interview format, led by James Naremore Professor Emeritus, IU Department of Communication and Culture, and Darlene Sadlier, Professor, Department of Spanish and Portuguese. Costa’s films have influenced a generation of world filmmakers who work to blur the border between documentary and narrative film.
Down to Earth – 1994: 7:00pm
Drama, Foreign Language
Leão, a Cape Verdean immigrant and a bricklayer, falls off the scaffolding in Lisbon and enters a deep coma. Arrangements are made for him to return to his homeland. A nurse, Mariana, eager for a change of scenery, volunteers to accompany him. When she arrives, nothing is like she expected. No one seems to be waiting for Leão or even to care for him. Mariana waits for someone to claim Leão and waits for him to wake up. She gets increasingly involved with the mysterious Fogo volcano community, taking her life in an unexpected direction. (35mm. Portuguese language with English subtitles.)
Ossos (Bones) – 1997: 10:00pm
Drama, Foreign Language
After a suicidal teenage girl gives birth, she misguidedly entrusts her baby’s safety to the troubled, deadbeat father. The first film in Pedro Costa’s transformative trilogy about Fontainhas, an impoverished quarter of Lisbon, Ossos is a tale of young lives torn apart by desperation. (35mm. Portuguese language with English subtitles.)