FESPACO Awards 2009

2009 Pan-African FESPACO Awards
2009 Pan-African FESPACO Film Festival: Burkina Faso, in March 2009
 

Set during Mengistu Haile Mariam’s 1974-1991 blood-soaked rule in Ethiopia, Haile Gerima’s Teza won the top prize at the 2009 Pan-African FESPACO film festival in Burkina Faso. In the film, a medical research scientist trained in Europe returns full of hope to Ethiopia, but once there his efforts are violently put to rest.
 
Golden Stallion: Teza by Haile Gerima (Ethiopia)
Silver Stallion: Nothing But the Truth by John Kani (South Africa)
Bronze Stallion: Mascarades by Lyes Salem (Algeria)
Oumarou Ganda Prize: Missa Hebie for Le Fauteuil (Burkina Faso)
Best Actress: Sana Mouziane for Les Jardins de Samira (Morocco)
Best Actor: Rapulana Seiphemo for Jerusalema (South Africa)
Best Screenplay: Mama Keita for [...]

by Massimo David | March 10, 2009   
| Subscribe / Syndicate
Tags: , ,

Dubai Film Festival Awards 2008

2008 Dubai Film Festival Awards
2008 Dubai Film Festival: Dec. 11-18, 2008
 

In Lyes Salem’s Masquerades, an arrogant man (played by Salem) living with his family in an Algerian village has one dream: to be respected by those around him. The problem is that he has a sister whom everyone believes will end up a spinster. To resolve the issue, the man tells everyone that he has found a rich suitor for his sister so that preparations for the marriage can begin. But now there’s another problem: where’s the bridegroom? Masquerades is Algeria’s submission for the 2009 best foreign-language film Oscar.

 
MUHR ARABIC
Muhr Arabic Feature – Best Film
MASQUERADES
Director: Lyes Salem
Country: Algeria – France
Muhr Arabic [...]

by Massimo David | December 20, 2008   
| Subscribe / Syndicate
Tags: , , , , , , , ,

Youssef Chahine

Youssef Chahine, possibly the world’s most renowned Arab filmmaker and the winner of a Lifetime Achievement Award at the 1997 Cannes Film Festival, died today at Al-Maadi Military Hospital in Cairo. About four weeks ago, Chahine fell into a coma after suffering a brain hemorrhage. He was 82.
Throughout his nearly six-decade career, Chahine tackled various genres and styles, ranging from socially conscious melodramas such as the Grand Hotel-like Cairo Station (1958), which remains his best-known film, to politically charged dramas addressing government repression and the threat of Islamic fundamentalism. Additionally, his (socially conscious) romantic drama The Blazing Sun (1954) launched the career of Omar Sharif.
Born in Alexandria on January 25, 1926, to a Christian family of Greek and Lebanese origin, [...]

by Andre Soares | July 27, 2008   
| Subscribe / Syndicate
Tags: , ,

CAIRO STATION Clip

Youssef Chahine’s 1958 Egyptian drama Bab el hadid / Cairo Station received international recognition following its screening at the Berlin Film Festival. In addition to directing the social drama, Chahine beautifully plays one of the film’s key characters, a shy cripple in love with a good-looking blonde. The film’s dialogue was provided by Mohamed Abu Youssef and Abdel Hay Adib.
"When Youssef Chahine made Cairo Station in 1958," wrote Gaby Wood in The Observer, "Egyptian audiences were confused and disturbed. They weren’t used to the gritty, neo-realist style Chahine had borrowed from Italy, and they couldn’t follow the numerous intersecting plots. But now that Cairo Station is being re-released as part of a Chahine retrospective (Chahine, who was born in [...]

by Andre Soares | June 3, 2008   
| Subscribe / Syndicate
Tags: , ,

AFI FEST 2007 – African Showcase

AFI FEST 2007 – African Showcase

CLOUDS OVER CONAKRY (IL VA PLEUVOIR SUR CONAKRY) Cast: Alex Ogou, Moussa Keita, Tella Kpomahou DIR: Cheick Fantamady Camara PROD: Annabel Thomas Majama Camera. Guinea, France
FARO – GODDESS OF THE WATERS (FARO – LA REINE DES EAUX) Cast: Sotigui Kouvate, Fili Traore, Michel Mpambara DIR: Salif Traore PROD: Philippe Quinsac, Daniel Morin, Barbel Mucch, Salif Traore, Ismael Oueadrog Mali, France, Canada, Germany, Burkina Faso
NOSALTRES (Documentary) DIR: Moussa Toure. Senegal

WELCOME TO NOLLYWOOD (Documentary) DIR: Jamie Meltzer PROD: Cayce Lindner, Henry S. Rosenthal. USA, Nigeria
 
AFI FEST 2007 – World Cinema
AFI FEST 2007 – Documentary Showcase
AFI FEST 2007
AFI FEST 2007 – Documentary Competition
AFI FEST 2007 – International Feature Competition
AFI FEST 2007 – Galas and [...]

by Andre Soares | November 2, 2007   
| Subscribe / Syndicate
Tags: ,

SUFFERING AND SMILING d: Dan Ollman

Suffering and Smiling (2006)
Director: Dan Ollman
 

The mass suffering of the people of Africa has long been ignored by more affluent governments elsewhere. This neglect is compounded by the fact that much of that affluence has come from plundering the natural resources of the African continent — with little thanks or reimbursement to the people who live there.
Dan Ollman’s atmospheric Suffering and Smiling highlights the situation in Nigeria. Lone voices cry out against the injustices suffered by the general population while the country’s rulers maintain a culture of corruption, self-gratification, and ruthless domination of the people they purport to serve.
Suffering and Smiling takes an unusual approach to the problem, as the vitality of at least one segment of Nigeria’s cultural [...]

by Rosemary Westwell | March 21, 2007   
| Subscribe / Syndicate
Tags: , ,

TSOTSI d: Gavin Hood

Tsotsi (2005)

Director: Gavin Hood. Screenplay: Gavin Hood; from the novel Tsotsi by Athol Fugard. Cast: Presley Chweneyagae, Mothusi Magano, Jerry Mofokeng
 

 
ONE THUG AND A BABY
Mostly spoken in Tsotsi Taal, or "gangster dialect," Tsotsi is the tale of a Johannesburg shantytown hoodlum nicknamed Tsotsi, or "Thug," who rediscovers his humanity after accidentally kidnapping an infant during a carjacking.
The premise, of course, is totally absurd. Director-writer Gavin Hood’s screenplay — based on Athol Fugard’s significantly more downbeat novel (set during the Apartheid era) — never convincingly explains why Tsotsi (Presley Chweneyagae) would want to keep the child. True, the baby reminds the heartless thug of his long buried childhood — he had lost his mother to AIDS and had suffered [...]

by Andre Soares | November 22, 2005   
| Subscribe / Syndicate
Tags: ,

YESTERDAY d: Darrell Roodt

Yesterday (2004)
Direction and screenplay: Darrell Roodt
Cast: Leleti Khumalo, Lihle Mvelase, Kenneth Kambule, Harriet Lehabe, Camilla Walker
 

 
To date, nowhere has the AIDS pandemic been felt more strongly than in Sub-Saharan Africa, home to approximately 10% of the world population and to more than 70% of the planet’s 40 million AIDS cases. In the past twenty-five years, it is estimated that more than 20 million Sub-Saharan Africans have died from complications of the disease. Even today, drug cocktails that are relatively accessible in other parts of the globe are still beyond the means of the vast majority of Africans.
Writer-director Darrell Roodt’s South African drama Yesterday is set in this catastrophic scenario. The film depicts the effects of AIDS in the life [...]

by Andre Soares | December 16, 2004   
| Subscribe / Syndicate
Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

HOTEL RWANDA – Don Cheadle

Hotel Rwanda (2004)
Direction: Terry George
Screenplay: Keir Pearson and Terry George
Cast: Don Cheadle, Sophie Okonedo, Nick Nolte, Joaquin Phoenix, Desmond Dube, Neil McCarthy, Jean Reno
 

 
In the second quarter of 1994, while much of the world was gearing up to the World Cup to be held in Los Angeles, one of history’s deadliest wholesale slaughters of human beings was taking place in Central Africa. Following the death of Rwanda’s President Juvenal Habyarimana, an ethnic Hutu whose plane was shot down above the Kigali airport on April 6, 1994, the Hutu powers-that-be decided it was time to eliminate the Tutsi minority who were blamed for the crash. What followed in the next three months was an orgy of hackings and shootings throughout [...]

by Andre Soares | November 20, 2004   
| Subscribe / Syndicate
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Toronto Film Festival 2004: African Cinema

Besides the usual Planet Africa program, which presents five features and eight shorts, the 2004 Toronto Film Festival is offering a look at South African cinema. The five features presented in the sidebar South Africa: Ten Years Later are Red Dust, the Zulu-language Yesterday (directed by Darrell Roodt), Drum, Cape of Good Hope, and Forgiveness.
Film topics range from the bleak (AIDS in Yesterday) and the political (the fight against Apartheid in Drum) to the uplifting (the bond created among humans through their love of animals in Cape of Good Hope).
Other African films to be presented at the festival include Senegalese director Ousmane Sembene’s La Noire de … (Black Girl), which was first released in 1966 and is widely [...]

by Andre Soares | September 13, 2004   
| Subscribe / Syndicate
Tags: , , , , , , , , ,