The 15th New York African Film Festival takes cinema from all genres throughout Africa and the African Diaspora to weave a story of the present— reaching backward into time and forward into the unknown. In a compelling array of features, shorts and documentaries, as well as experimental film and archival footage, the festival selects from treasured stories of the past, as well as contextualizes the present and future within the framework of history.

In this spirit, whether non-fiction or fantasy, the work in this year’s festival follows a documentary flow. We continue our tradition of screening archival footage from the African continent by observing the 50th anniversary of independence of the Republic of Guinea. Also featured are slave routes and migration passages from Eastern and Northern Africa, including the films Baa Baa Black Girl, which examines the indigenous Afro-Turk community born during the Ottoman Empire, and the premiere episode of The African Slave Trades: Across the Indian Ocean, narrated by Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka. Films such as Charles Burnett’s Namibia: The Struggle for Liberation, Cuba: An African Odyssey and Brothers in Arms all directly link liberation movements in Southern and Western Africa to the history of the African Diaspora, charting trajectories of political awakening that are not yet popularly known. In Juju Factory and Shoot the Messenger, we become interlocutors within the realms of truth and reconciliation. Goodbye Mothers, based on the 1960s emigration of Moroccan Jews to the new state of Israel, reminds audiences of the long-standing relationship that Jews and Muslims have consciously shared. Through ironic inversion, Africa Paradis chronicles tomorrow’s émigrés who find themselves in a prosperous yet sometimes inhospitable African nation.

Finally, Isaac Julien’s experimental film Fantôme Afrique, along with This is My Africa and Awaiting for Men, represent the epitome of the 2008 New York African Film Festival. Daring, crisp and lush, the films manifest visual metaphors for Africa — at once historical and futuristic — exposing the timelessness and rigor of the storytelling epic.

This year’s festival explores the past and the future of African cinema as we anticipate a renaissance in African media-making both on the continent and around the world. The films in the festival address this spirit of the times and allow us to take cinema, history, Africa and the future and set forth into the cosmos — as the lights go down let us explore our history and our future together.

We are also honored to welcome such notable artists as Wole Soyinka andCharles Burnett to pre-screening receptions during the festival.

On Monday, April 14, the African Film Festival will present its annual panel discussion in collaboration with Columbia University’s Institute for African Studies.

The 15th Anniversary New York African Film Festival was organized by Richard Peña of the Film Society of LincolnCenter and by Mahen Bonetti, Aba Taylor, Alonzo Speight, Muriel Placet-Kouassi of the African Film Festival, Inc.

With special thanks to the AFF Board of Directors, Joan Baffour, Luca Bonetti, Françoise Bouffault, Rumbi Bwerinofa, Gabriel Donati, Kevin Duggan, Jacki Fischer, Odette A. Gregory, Belynda Hardin, Alexander Markov, Andrew Milne, Philippa Naughten, Prerana Reddy, Cheryl Duncan, Terrie Williams Agency and Kojo Associates.