The tour covers,

•    Honduras (1-5 August) one screening
•    El Salvador (8-10 August) one screening
•    Nicaragua (10-14 August) one screening
•    Dominican Republic.(17 -21 August) one screening
•    Colombia (22-25 August) one screening

This is the first time that a film from Uganda will be screened in these countries.

The 4th SWIFF has in store over 135 powerfully engaging, diverse feature, documentary and short films from India, Korea and a number of countries around the world

Screening on the 23rd of July 2011

http://www.inkocentre.org/wiff4/index.html

Screening Times @ Broughal Auditorium
1:15Pm Saturday, June 18 – One Screening Only!

http://southsidefilmfestival.com/festival/2011-festival-films/imani

IMANI won the OIF (Organisation internationale de la francophonie) prize for the best full-length film at the prestigious African Film festival in Montréal,  Canada called “Vues D’Afrigue” that ran in April and May 2011.

vuesdafrique.org

Way to go IMANI team!

IMANI @ the San Francisco International Women’s Film Festival!

A scene from IMANI

IMANI, by Ugandan filmmaker Caroline Kamya, will be screening this Saturday as part of the 7th Annual San Francisco International Women’s Film Festival! This evocative film ventures into the lives of three characters—a child soldier, a maid and a hip hop dancer—living in contemporary Uganda. It received a GFI grant in 2009 and has gone on to win Best Film in an African Language at the African Movie Academy Awards and the Silver Award at the Cairo International Film Festival.

This screening marks a new partnership with the Women’s Film Institute, our neighbors at the Ninth Street Independent Film Center. IMANI is playing on Saturday, April 9th at 5:15, and our very own Operations Manager, Marita Murphy, will be introducing the film and speaking about GFI’s Granting program, which has supported filmmakers from over 45 nations to date!

The San Francisco International Women’s Film Festival runs April 6th-10th at the Roxie Theatre in San Francisco’s Mission district. For more information, visit the San Francisco International Women’s Film Festival website.

JANUARY – Palm Springs International Film Festival USA

FEBRUARY – Rotterdam International Film Festival – HOLLAND

FEBRUARY  - Goteborg International Film Festival – SWEDEN

1) “Chips and Liver Girls” – Commissioned by The Danish Film Institute ( with Co-Director Boris Bertram)

2) FIRE FLY – PART OF RAIDING AFRICA – Commissioned by The Rotterdam International Film Festival

SYNOPSIS - A nine-year old boy is told a magical fairytail by his twelve-year old sister setting him on a voyage of discovery and enlightenment. His sister wants to teach him about life through challenges. He becomes the protagonist in his own fairy tail journey searching out “wise words” from “wise people” in his small town of SONG ZHUANG outside Beijing.

Check out the trailer.

Screened as part of the CINEMA SAFARI section.

Imani (2010; Uganda / Sweden)–In the course of just one day in contemporary Uganda, we venture into the seemingly unrelated lives of a child soldier, a maid, and a hip hop dancer. A refreshing snapshot of a country settling into a new national identity with richly drawn characters and vivid cinematography. Director: Caroline Kamya. Cast: Rehema Nanfuka, Philip Buyi, Stephen Ocen. IMDb.

Watch an interview of Director Caroline Kamya on American TV

http://www.kpsplocal2.com/mediacenter/local.aspx

Our protagonists are Mary (Rehema Nanfuka) a young single mother who leaves her son in the village to work in town as a maid in the Kampala home of a wealthy young woman not even a generation older; Armstrong (Philip Buyi Roy) a teenaged hip hop dancer who has travelled the world with his talent and now puts on dance performances in local community centres; and Olweny (Stephen Ocen) a young boy not even yet in his teens, who is leaving a rehabilitation centre for former child soldiers to return to his family after four years absence.

It’s hard at first to figure out where the film is going and, with its slow pace, directorCaroline Kamya’s skill seems to be in keeping you watching – avidly. Perhaps it’s the undertone of violence which we’re all too often led to believe pervades the lives of Africans and which is evident, for instance, in Mary’s sister’s face, beaten to a pulp by her husband, or in the fact that Olweny is on his way home after having spent years doing things that child soldiers do – but none of this violence is actually seen on screen. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that this is a very gentle, non-confrontational film. Even when Armstrong, our hip-hop dancer, meets up with a someone he used to run with in his past life, now a “Ghetto King” (this being his actual nickname), anticipation mounts of the obvious stand-off that’s about to happen but which never does.

But, let’s be honest, violence, in whatever form it takes, has been done to death (no pun intended) on film. What Kamya does here instead, is stealthily observe the ways in which people, regardless of their own station in life, try to exert power over the lives of others. In Olweny’s case we see the aftermath of that power, a seemingly naturally gentle, introverted, loner of a child who has to come to terms with a past which, while short in length, will surely be far reaching in its impact on his life. And then what? Does escaping and/or leaving behind war automatically mean entering peace? Well, the battles might be different, but when Armstrong’s less than savoury past catches up with him in the form of King, it’s not so much to harm him physically, but to remind him that King, and the nefarious lifestyle he leads, still has influence over Armstrong, an influence which King is only to happy to exert, and which will always tentatively but instinctively be a draw, even if only to ask for abeyance. Even when Armstrong returns to his dance troupe unscathed after his encounter with King, you get the feeling he’s not altogether out of the woods. And as for Mary, while she herself is a resilient woman doing her best by her child and sister, as a maid, it would seem that her service to others is pretty much cut and dried but, surprisingly, it’s from a less likely source that her personal tormentor is to come, and that it comes on the back of the guise of help makes it all the more stomach churning.

by MSWOO 

SHADOW AND ACT  - On Cinema Of The African Diaspora