The second annual African Film Festival (AFF) seeks to “expand cinematic palettes” and involve audiences in “cinephilia”, according to Aboubakar Sanogo, Assistant Professor of Film Studies at Carleton.
On the festival’s first night, Oct. 16, Carleton’s River Building was dotted with posters depicting the African continent and its surrounding islands backed by a heart-red glow pulsing out into an ocean-blue surrounding.
The festival’s five-film lineup was carefully selected by Sanogo, Tom McSorely, Executive Director of the Canadian Film Institute (CFI) and Jerrett Zaroski, Director of Cinema Programs at CFI, with a number of elements in mind.
The primary intention is to “expand the palate of people, with regard to cinema,” Sanogo said.
Although many international films are excluded from mainstream cinematic exposure, African films lacked a unique platform in Ottawa prior to the AFF—the European Union Film Festival will be celebrating its 31st year next month, and the Latin American Film Festival celebrated its 20th year this spring, while the African Film Festival is now only in its second year.
The challenge now that the ball is rolling is audience development, and for that McSorely said one “must be patient.”
McSorely said the festival is still infantile in its second year, so a devout audience to match those of other film festivals will take time to build. That said, he added the intended audience is broad and inclusive as the films seek to engage, include, and diversify.
The pictures are intended to “make people think” and to involve the audience in “some sort of cinephilia,” Sanogo said. Through collaborative efforts the directors sought to balance representation of a multitude of cinematic forms, including historical narratives, documentaries and fiction.
The two-fold approach of curating the films involved attendance of a variety of festivals, and emphasized “self-representation,” in that the films chosen are all made by Africans, and the representation of the entire continent, according to Sanogo.
Although there are few hard-lined restrictions, the task of putting together the festival is indeed demanding, Sanogo said.
This year’s film selections were produced by “promising new talent, and established masters of film from Chad, Rwanda, Senegal, South Africa and Tunisia” according to a Carleton press release.
The festival’s premiere screening was featured in this year’s Toronto International Film Festival, while others have won awards, and were included in the Cannes Film Festival, Sundance Film Festival, and Berlin Film Festival.
McSorely said the festival’s closing feature is one worth seeing— titled Things of the Aimless Wanderer. It is a Rwandan film described on the CFI website as “provocative” and that McSorely said depicts “encounters between cultures and cosmologies.” He added the movie is “jaw-dropping,” “astute,” and “poetic.”
