Note: Program notes and resources will be added as the festival progresses.
Opening Night at the McMenamins Kennedy School
TSOTSI( South Africa, 2005, 94 min.), directed by Gavin Hood. The Festival opens with one of the most highly acclaimed films to have emerged from Africa in recent years, the winner of the 2006 Academy Award for Best Foreign Film. Powerful, violent, and thought-provoking, Tsotsi is set in a Johannesburg shantytown and follows a group of young criminals led by a young man known only as “Tsotsi,” street slang for “Thug.” When he finds himself the guardian of a baby whose mother he has shot, long-repressed human feelings threaten to surface and compromise his position. Repulsive and seemingly irredeemable at first, Tsotsi becomes increasingly complex as the film progresses, and so do our feelings about him. In Zulu, Xhosa, and Afrikaans with English subtitles.
Friay, February 2, 5:00 p.m. & 7:00 p.m. (open to all ages), and 9:00 p.m. (21 & older). McMenamins Kennedy School Theatre, 5736 N.E. 33 rd Avenue.
Program Notes for Tsotsi
Tsotsi Website
The Tsotsi Soundtrack, with Audio Clips and NPR interview with Zola
About Kwaito Music
South Africa Fact Sheet
Celebration of 50 Years of Ghanaian Independence with Film Director Kwaw P. Ansah of Ghana
CROSSROADS OF PEOPLE,CROSSROADS OF TRADE (Ghana, 1994, 40 min.)
CFAF opens its celebration of the 50 th anniversary of Ghana’s independence with this documentary survey of the Ghanaian people by the acclaimed director Kwaw P. Ansah, who will be in attendance. It looks at the peoples of Ghana from the period before European contact through Colonialism, the struggle for independence, and beyond. It also reveals ways in which Ghanaian cultural practices have spread around the world. Commissioned by the U.S. Smithsonian Institution, Crossroads is that rare phenomenon: African history through the eyes of an African. In English.
THE GOLDEN STOOL: THE SOUL OF THE ASANTES ( Ghana, 2001, 48 min.), directed by Kwaw P. Ansah. This film chronicles the enormous importance of The Golden Stool, symbol of traditional power and spirituality for Ghana’s Asante people. Since its creation during the reign of the Asantehene (King of Asante) Osei TuTu I, the Stool has become not only synonymous with the monarchy, but revered more than any individual king. This film gives us a sense of just what this cultural symbol means for the Ghanaian people.
Saturday, February 3, 2 p.m., Moriarty Arts & Humanities Building 104, PCC-Cascade.
About Kwah Ansah
LOVE BREWED IN THE AFRICAN POT (1981, Ghana , 125 min.), directed by Kwaw P. Ansah. Immensely popular throughout English-speaking Africa , Love Brewedin the African Pot is Mr. Ansah’s first feature-length film. Combining satire, comedy and melodrama, the film is an African love story that addresses a serious issue: the clash between indigenous traditions and European influences in 1951 pre-independent Ghana . Love collides with social class and colonialism when Aba Appiah, born to privilege, falls in love with Joe Quansah, son of a fisherman. Her father, retired civil servant Kofi Appiah, has other plans for her, and seeks to block their marriage. The resulting conflict has complex and unexpected consequences. In English.
Saturday, February 3, 7:30 p.m.MoriartyArts & HumanitiesBuilding, Room 104, PCC-Cascade.
Program Notes for Love Brewed
About Kwaw Ansah
DELWENDE: GET UP AND WALK ( Burkina Faso, 2005, 90 min.), directed by S. Pierre Yameogo. A cinematic critique of the self-serving misuse of traditional cultural practices, Delwende tells the story of an older woman who, with her husband’s connivance, has been labeled a “soul eater witch” and ostracized from her village. She finds refuge in a “home for old women” in Ouagadougou, where she languishes. Her only hope is rescue by her daughter, herself the victim of her father’s patriarchal prerogatives. This is ultimately an uplifting call for women’s self-assertion, empowerment, and mutual support. In Moré with English subtitles.
Thursday, February 8, 12:00 p.m., and Friday, February 9, 7:30 p.m., MoriartyArts & HumanitiesBuilding 104, PCC Cascade Campus.
Program Notes for Delwende
Interview with Director Pierre Yameogo
"Life's Like the Movies"--Delwende in Burkina Faso
Burkina Faso Fact Sheet
NHA FALA/MY VOICE (Guinea Bissau/Cape Verde, 2OO2, 110 min.), directed by Flora Gomes. By the excellent director of Mortu Nega and The Blue Eyes of Yonta, this film is a light-hearted, musical look at the clash between cultural tradition and modernity. Vita is a young girl from Guinea-Bissau with a gorgeous voice; the problem is, in her family tradition, singing brings with it the curse of death. Vita goes to France, where she of course falls in love and of course cannot help bursting into song. Before she knows it, she is a pop star. But how can Vita keep her family from finding out about her transgression? This audience favorite is a tribute to the power of youthful dreams and hopes for the future. In Kabuverdianu/Criolo with English subtitles.
Thursday, February 8, 1:45 p.m., and Saturday, February 10, 7:30 p.m., MoriartyArts & HumanitiesBuilding 104, PCC Cascade Campus.
Program Notes for Nha Fala
Interview with Flora Gomes about Nha Fala from Africultures
Interview with Flora Gomes about Nha Fala from the European Union
Interview with Fatou N'Diaye, Star of Nha FalaGuinee-Bissau Fact Sheet
Thursday Evening Documentary Series
BLACK GOLD (U.K./Ethiopia, 2006, 78 min.), directed by Marc and Nick Francis. A hard-hitting new documentary on the impact of the global coffee trade on Africa, this is the film that is driving Starbucks crazy. Coffee is now the world’s #2 traded commodity (after oil), an industry topping $80 billion a year; only a tiny fraction of that amount goes to the producers. This film introduces us to the Oromia Coffee Farmers Co-operative Union and its remarkable director, Tadesse Meskela, working to improve conditions for 74,000 growers in Ethiopia, where some of the world’s finest coffee is grown, through . The film contrasts the comfortable world of boutique coffee consumption with the everyday realities of farmers in desperate need of Fair Trade. An inspiring story of Africans working to control their own destiny. In English and Amharic with English subtitles.
Thursday, February 16, 7:30 p.m., Moriarty Arts & Humanities Building 104, PCC Cascade Campus.
Black Gold Official Website
Ethiopia Fact Sheet
A CHILD’S LOVE STORY/UN AMOUR D'ENFANT ( Senegal, 2004, 96 min.), directed by Ben Diogaye Beye. A coming-of-age story set in Dakar, A Child’s Love Story follows the shifting relationships among a group of five boys and girls. From different social classes and family backgrounds, they nevertheless attempt to maintain their friendships amidst the shifts and dislocations experienced by society at large. This tender and engaging portrait of urban pre-adolescents won the UNICEF Award for the Promotion of Children’s Rights, at the Festival Panafricain du Cinéma de Ouagadougou (FESPACO 2005). In French with English subtitles.
Thursday, February 15, 12:00 p.m. and Friday, February 16, 7:30 p.m., MoriartyArts & HumanitiesBuilding 104, PCC Cascade Campus.
Program Notes for A Child's Love Story
Thursday Evening Documentary Series/ Film Director Thomas Allen Harris
TWELVE DISCIPLES OF NELSON MANDELA(South Africa/USA, 2005, 75 min.), directed by Thomas Allen Harris. CFAF is pleased to welcome Thomas Allen Harris, award-winning filmmaker, artist, and “cultural warrior.” His award-winning new film tells the story of his step-father, Benjamin Pule Leinaeng (Lee), who had been a young cadre in the South African anti-Apartheid movement and was one of the first ANC activists to go into exile in 1960. Lee eventually made it to New York to head up the ANC office there. This film is his history, and the history of all those whose resistance eventually led to the demise of the Apartheid government. But it is also Harris’ own story, revealing his often difficult relationship with this man whom he would come to admire and even emulate. In English.
Thursday, February 15, 7:30 p.m., Moriarty Arts & Humanities Building 104, PCC Cascade Campus.
About Thomas Allen Harris
Thomas Allen Harris Website
California Newsreel Catalogue Entry
CFAF at Portland State University with Film Director Thomas Allen Harris
THAT’S MY FACE/E MINHA CARA (USA/Brazil, 2001, 56 min.), directed by Thomas Allen Harris. In this documentary Harris traces his personal journey reconciling his experiences as an African, an African-American, a gay man, and a member of the world-wide African diaspora. Raised both in the Bronx and in Tanzania, for a long time Harris could find his identity in neither place. It was only upon his discovery of Brazil and its vibrant African-Diasporic culture that he began to glimpse a strategy for constructing a satisfying identity. The film itself is an assemblage of home movies, archival footage, and footage shot in Brazil, blended together to form a compelling investigation into identity, culture, and sexuality. It has won a number of international awards including the Jury Award for Artistic Excellence at the Atlanta Film Festival, the Prize of Ecumenical Jury of Christian Churches at the Berlin Film Festival and Best Documentary Award at OUTFEST the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Film Festival. In English.
Friday, February 16, 12:00 p.m.,Smith Memorial Student Union Ballroom, Room 355, PortlandStateUniversity, 1825 S.W. Broadway.
About Thomas Allen Harris
Thomas Allen Harris Website
Family Film Day at McMenamins Kennedy School Theatre
Sponsored by Providence Health Systems
KIRIKOU AND THE WILD BEASTS( France, 2005, 75 min.), directed by Michel Ocelot and Bénédicte Galup. Yes, Kirikou is back! Kirikou returns in this follow-up to repeated Festival favorite Kirikou and the Sorceress. As Grandfather, seated on his throne in the blue grotto, tells us, “The story of Kirkou and the Sorceress was too short. We didn’t have time to tell everything that the child Kirkou accomplished. And he truly did some amazing deeds, which must not be forgotten. So, I am going to tell them to you.” And he tells us how the inventive child became a gardener, a detective, a potter, a merchant, a traveler, and a doctor, still the smallest and most valiant of heroes. In English.
Saturday, February 17, 2 p.m., McMenamins Kennedy School Theatre, 5736 N.E. 33 rd Avenue.
Interview with the Director, Michel Ocelot
Kirikou Website (in French), including two scenes from the film
Centerpiece Film/Diaspora Film Night
SCENT OF OAK/ROBLE DE OLOR ( Cuba, 2002, 135 min.), directed by Rigoberto López. Based on a true story, Scent of Oak is set in the plantation world of 19 th Century Cuba, where Cornelio Souchay, a German coffee planter has come to establish a more humane way of dealing with his slave labor than was characteristic of the way that the Cuban sugar plantations were run. He enters into a tumultuous relationship with Ursula Lambert, a powerful black woman from Haiti, that is counter to all the social norms of the time. Both his plantation and his love relationship come to form what the director calls “a doomed utopia.” This is another profound film from Cuba that explores power relations in a society marked by race-based slavery. In Spanish with English subtitles.
Saturday, February 17, 7.p.m., Hollywood Theatre, 4122 N.E. Sandy Blvd.
CubaNow article on Roble de Olor
DRUM( South Africa, 2004, 94 min.), directed by Zola Maseko. Winner of the Grand Prize at the most recent FESPACO (Pan-African Film Festival of Ouagadougou) and featured at Sundance and Cannes, Drum is another strong element in the current cinematic renaissance occurring in South Africa, and Zola Maseko (a former soldier in the anti-Apartheid struggle) one of its brightest young directors. Set in the vibrant world of Sophiatown in the 1950s, the film focuses on Henry Nxumalo (played by the African-American actor Taye Diggs). He is a fun-loving sportswriter for Drum, a groundbreaking popular magazine for black readers in South Africa; when he unexpectedly finds himself investigating the truth about a young man who has gone missing, Henry starts down a path of political awakening from which he cannot return. In English and Afrikaans with English subtitles.
Thursday, February 22, 12:00 p.m. and Friday, February 23, 7:30 p.m., Moriarty Arts & HumanitiesBuilding 104, PCC Cascade Campus.
Program Notes for Drum
South Africa Fact Sheet
Statement by Director Zola Maseko
On Henry Nxumalo and Can Themba
Interview with Maseko in 2001
On Restitution Payments for the Former Residents of Sophiatown
Wikipedia Entry on Sophiatown
City of Johannesburg Article on Drum
"Drum Beat of Africa"--1959 Time Article on Drum
BORDERS/FRONTIERES ( Algeria, 2001, 105 min.), directed by Mostapha Djadjam. Every day we hear tales of individuals trying to make their way across borders in a clandestine search for a better life. Borders is a deliberate attempt to counter the negative stereotypes often attached to these people. It follows a group of six men and a woman attempting the arduous journey from Senegal through Mauritania to Morocco and then across the Straits of Gibralter to Spain. Each has his or her own reason for taking the risk. The group members come to form a tight-knit but volatile community, good-humored and mutually supportive at times, at others filled with distrust and despair. Beautifully photographed and well-acted, Borders seeks to restore “a bit of humanity and dignity to these beings who are more than just a statistic.” In French with English subtitles.
Thursday, February 22, 12:00 p.m. and Saturday, February 24, 7:30 p.m., MoriartyArts & HumanitiesBuilding 104, PCC Cascade Campus.
Program Notes for Borders
Catalogue Notes for Borders
Algeria Fact Sheet
NY Times Article (2/19/07) on South Asians Joining West African Illegal Immigrants
"Illegal Immigrants and Stowaways," statistics from Seafarers Assistance
The European Union and African Illegal Immigrants, recent article from workpermit.com
Thursday Evening Documentary Series
OCHRE AND WATER ( Namibia, 2001, 53 min.), directed by Craig Matthew and Joëlle Chesselet. Set in the starkly beautiful landscape of northwestern Namibia, this documentary is another take on the conflict between tradition and modernity, this time at the crossroads between culture, politics, technology, and environmentalism. The Himba people, known as the “ochre people” for the red earth with which they cover themselves, have worked out a successful pastoral life thanks to the waters of the Kunene River, which flows through the desert where they live. But when the government initiates plans to dam the Kunene in a massive hydroelectric project, the Himba and their irrepressible chief must learn to function in the world of politics and public relations if they are to survive. In English.
Thursday, February 22, 7:30 p.m., Moriarty Arts & Humanities Building 104, PCC Cascade Campus.
Doxa Productions/Ochre and Water Website
Overview of the Film on the Off the Fence Website
Article on Chief Kapika's attempt to set up a Foundation to promote alternative energy projects in the Kunene area.
Article: "Proposed Dam Threatens To Wash Out African Subsistence Tribe's Way of Life"
International Rivers Network: Protect Epupa Campaign
Article on Epopa from the Cultural Survival website
Scientific American article on Epupa and the Himba
Grant Proposal for Support of the Film Katjira's Dream
Namibia Country Sheet
Women Filmmakers Week
THE NIGHT OF TRUTH ( Burkina Faso, 2004, 100 min.), directed by Fanta Régina Nacro. In Djoula and French with English subtitles. This is the much-anticipated first feature film by Burkina Faso’s first woman director. Creator of a number of acclaimed short films, Fanta Régina Nacro has chosen as her subject the internecine strife so prevalent in all parts of the world. Set in a hypothetical West African country exhausted by ten years of civil war, The Night of Truth takes place during the long-awaited night of reconciliation. The President and the rebel leader have agreed to meet in a village to sign the formal peace agreement, and careful precautions are taken to insure that hostilities do not resume. Ten years of conflict, however, leave a legacy that is not easily erased: the fate of the country remains at risk as this long “Night of Truth” unfolds.
Thursday, March 1, 12:00 p.m. and Friday, March 2, 7:30 p.m., MoriartyArts & HumanitiesBuilding 104, PCC Cascade Campus.
Interview with Fanta Rgina Nacro
Study Guide to Night of Truth
Burkina Faso Fact Sheet
BEDWIN HACKER ( Tunisia, 2003, 98 min.), directed by Nadia El Fani. Created for a film series called Envisioning the World of Women: Stories From the Middle East, this first feature film by Nadia El Fani is humorous, whimsical, and provocative. Hidden away in a Tunisian oasis, Kalt uses her technical skills to hack into the TV channels of the West and send out her own subversive messages, which come from the mouth of an animated camel named Bedwin Hacker. Despite the efforts of French Intelligence to track her down, Kalt will not be silenced or stereotyped. Her very existence is an affront to convention, and a declaration of her uniqueness and authority as a woman and as a citizen of the Third World. In Arabic and French with English subtitles.
Thursday, March 1, 12:30 p.m. and Saturday, March 3, 8:00 p.m., MoriartyArts & HumanitiesBuilding 104, PCC Cascade Campus.
Program Notes for Bedwin Hacker
Africultures interview with Nadia El Fani
Afrik.com interview with Nadia El Fani
Tunisia Country Sheet
Thursday Evening Documentary Series
SISTERS IN LAW(Cameroon/UK, 2005, 104 min.), directed by Florence Ayisi and Kim Longinotto. This hugely popular documentary (winner of top awards at Cannes and other international film festivals) has been called “a cross between Judge Judy and The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency.” Sisters in Law introduces us to two no-nonsense jurists in Kumba, Cameroon: State Prosecutor Vera Ngassa and Court President Beatrice Ntuba. There have been no convictions for spousal or family abuse in Kumba in 17 years, but this judicial duo is determined to change that. Through a combination of compassion, withering wisecracks, common sense, and stiff sentences, they see that justice is done, and we are with them every step of the way. In English.
Thursday, March 2, 7:30 p.m., Moriarty Arts & Humanities Building 104, PCC Cascade Campus.
Program Notes for Sisters In Law
Catalogue Description for Sisters In Law
NPR Interview with Vera Ngassa and Beatrice NtubaChannel 4 (UK) website on the film, with video clips (Channel 4 helped fund the film)
Channel 4 Audio Interview with director Florence Ayisi
Leonard Lopate Audio Interview with director Kim Longinotto
Article about director Kim Longinotto
About Florence Ayisi
Interview with Kim Longinotto
Cameroon Country Sheet
Saturday Matinee Documentary Series/Women Filmmakers Week
AL’LÈÈSSI…AN AFRICAN ACTRESS ( Niger, 2004, 69 min.), directed by Rahmatou Keita. Rahmatou Keita has chosen to make her first feature film about a woman who was in many ways an inspiration to her: the actress Zalika Souley, one of the first African women film stars. Known for her “Bad Girl” roles in films from the Sixties, she was a scandalous figure in that Muslim region before her career imploded, and with it the dreams of a generation. Blending archival footage with extended interviews with Souley, Keita builds a film that clearly captures the confluence of cinema, gender, and dream. In French with English subtitles.
KUXA KANEMA ( Mozambique, 2003, 52 min.), directed by Margarida Cardoso. This documentary is a testimony to the travails of the National Institute of Cinema (I.N.C.), created by newly-independent Mozambique in 1975. Using newly-unearthed film footage, Kuxa Kanema reveals the dreams, aspirations, frustrations, and demise of the I.N.C.—and of the socialist government of Samora Machel that nurtured it. In Portuguese with English subtitles.
Saturday, March 3, 2:00 p.m., Moriarty Arts & Humanities Building 104, PCC Cascade Campus.
Program Notes for AL’LÈÈSSI and KUXA KANEMA
Mozambique Country Sheet
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