The seventh installment of the New York African Film Festival is proud to present a groundbreaking program of video films from Nigeria and Ghana, entitled “Video Awudjo!” (Yoruba for stew). In these countries, artists have adopted video to circumvent the high cost of film production and to reach the public on a variety of important issues: the effects of the AIDS crisis, the difficulties of modern city life, contemporary spirituality, environmental concerns, and rampant official corruption and greed. These “video films” are wildly popular in their home markets and are done in a postmodern style that reflects contemporary African sensibilities shaped by globalization. Thus, though they are made for local consumption, these films’ compelling and comic mix of consumerism, sex, morality, melodrama, horror, and witchcraft should appeal to international audiences as well. Veteran Nigerian director, Tunde Kelani, and producer/actor, Richard Mofe-Damijo will be on hand to introduce their films and join international film scholars and American distributors for a lively panel discussion on the video phenomenon at the Schomburg Center.

The festival’s “Then and Now” program will also pair the first films by established filmmakers Raoul Peck and Ousmane Sembène with their most recent work. This program is a good way for newcomers to African cinema to get an overview of African film history and have a chance to interact with both of these filmmaking legends. Peck’s Lumumba, about the ill-fated first leader of independent Zaire, will make its US Premiere at AFF’s Opening Night. While AFF also honors Sembène’s continuing efforts at politically informed filmmaking with a special reception and screening of Faat Kine, about a Senegalese woman who valiantly fights the forces of patriarchy and neocolonialism to achieve financial and personal independence.

AFF will also continue its popular “Emerging Market Series” which highlights the latest work of up-and-coming African and Diaspora directors whose films deserve critical recognition and broader US exposure. Films in this series include US Premieres by Gabonese director Imunga Ivanga whose Dole / Dollar tells the hear-wrenching story of a street youth desperate to make some cash to save his ailing mother, and Serge Coelo’s Daresalam, which explores how two childhood friends’ lives are torn apart during the 1970’s war between Chad and Libya.

AFF 2001 programs were designed with contemporary audiences in mind—a generation culturally shaped by the Internet and hip-hop—for whom African cinema is an exciting and unknown cultural phenomenon. AFF hopes that by presenting cutting-edge films and videos from the continent and its diaspora, American audiences will understand that African culture is not a static entity, but part of the vibrant and sophisticated global marketplace of ideas and products.

This program was organized by the African Film Festival, Inc. (Mahen Bonetti, Prerana Reddy, Brigitte Houngbedji, Don Webster, Belynda Hardin, Maguette Ndiaye.) Thanks are due to Tunde Giwa, Hilary Ney, Mamadou Niang, Luca Bonetti, M.C. Stephens, Kevin Duggan, Devora Avikzer-Foravi, Jodie Becker Medi, Kaine Agary, Myrna V. Long PR, Maureen Slattery, Joan Baffour, Bertha Panda, Tony Abulu.