AFRICA UNITE
by Stephanie Black
Premiere in Ghana in the presence of the filmmaker
7.30 pm (90 min., US, 2008)

AFRICA UNITE is a singular and masterfully executed film by Stephanie Black that is at once concert tribute, Marley family travelogue, and humanitarian documentary, igniting the screen with the spirit of world-renowned reggae icon bob marley in its every frame. In commemoration of Bob’s 60th birthday, Africa Unite is centered on the Mar’ first-time-ever family trip to Ethiopia in 2005. Includes rare footage of world-renowned reggae icon Bob Marley. There in the capital city of Addis Ababa three generations of Marleys take part in a 12-hour concert attended by more than 300,000 people from around the world, with the ultimate purpose of inspiring the young generations of Africa to unite for the future of their continent.

ROADS TO 2010*
by Jaime Villareal | Premiere in Ghana
6.00 pm (27 mins, Chile, South Africa, US, 2009)

Roads to 2010 is a documentary that shows life in South Africa just one year before the Soccer World Cup Kicks Off. This piece will explore the great effort the country is making to organize this soccer tournament analyzing all the social implications of having this big event for the first time in Africa. To achieve this, the piece will be composed of three separate children stories that are related in one way or another to the World Cup. The idea is to establish a representative social picture through three specific different characters filmed in daily life.

ME BRONI BA*
by Akosua Adoma Owusu
6.00 pm (22 mins, Ghana/US, 2009)

Me Broni Ba is a lyrical portrait of hair salons in Kumasi, Ghana. The tangled legacy of European colonialism in Africa is revealed in images of women practicing hair braiding on discarded white baby dolls from the West. The film unfolds through a series of vignettes, set against a child’s story of migrating from Ghana to the United States. The film uncovers the meaning behind the Akan term of endearment, me broni ba, which means “my white baby.”

SOLIDARITY IN SAYA: An Afro-Bolivian Music Movement*
by Maya Jensen | Premiere in Ghana
6.45 pm (30 mins, Bolivia, 2009)

This documentary examines the traditional Afro-Bolivian Saya music and the recent movement that uses this music to pursue their social and political needs. For centuries, Afro-Bolivians have remained isolated in rural poverty as subsistence farmers since the abolition of slavery. In recent decades, there has been a wave of urban migration, as new generations seek opportunity. While these youths face alienation and discrimination in their new urban environment, they build a supportive community around the Saya music group, which serves as a refuge from marginalization in mainstream Bolivian society. The social cohesion and unity cultivated within the Saya group has become a platform for political activism to confront the invisibility of the Afro-Bolivian minority. Rather than standing idle while the colonial hegemonic system of racial hierarchy defines them, the Afro-Bolivian Saya group members empower themselves by defining their own history and identity through these music performances.

ROOF*
by Anita Afonu | 7.30 pm (8 mins, Ghana/NAFTI, 2009)

With the upsurge of economic hardships, one basic human need-Shelter, has been taken for granted. This is more in demand than supply and a lot of people are forced to live in the city homeless. roof explores the situation of rent in Accra, telling the story of Janet Amponsah who has to struggle everyday with the high demand for accommodation.

SAVE THE FISHERMEN*
by Richard Ocloo
7.45 pm (26 mins, Ghana/NAFTI, 2009)

This National Film and Television Institute (NAFTI) final year documentary was inspired by a tragedy of seven experienced Ghanaian fishermen whose canoe was overrun by an American oil supply ship on July 4, 2007. It explores the dangers and hardships fishermen in Ghana encounter in relation to bigger vessels on the high seas and tackles the issue of the pair trawling fishing methods.

CRIES OF THE CHOIR*
by Sebastien Tendeng | Premiere in Ghana
8.30 pm (21 mins, Senegal, 2010)

Cries of the choir is the tragic situation of the population of Guet Ndar, small traditional village of fishermen, in Saint-Louis (Senegal). This village is located in the Langue de Barbarie (Barbary tongue) between the sea and the river. Stuck between the increasing water level and an overpopulation, the inhabitants must live in cramped conditions in small houses gathering sometimes up to 50 persons. In front of this unbearable promiscuity, Doudiang Seck, a young father of Guet Ndar makes us fall into this population’s heart who shouts in chorus his despair.

THE MURDER OF EMMETT TILL
by Stanley Nelson | Premiere in Ghana
9.15 pm (USA 2003)

In August 1955, a fourteen-year-old black boy whistled at a white woman in a grocer store in Money, Mississippi. Emmett Till, a teen from Chicago didn’t wunderstand that he had broken the unwritten laws of the Jim Crow Sout until three days later when two white men dragged him from his bed in the dead of night, beat him brutally and then shot him in the head. Although his killers were arrested and charged with murder, they were both quickly acquitted by an all-white all-male jury. Shortly thereafter the defendants sold their story, including a detailed account of how they brutally murdered Till. This was one of the sparks that set the Civil Rights Movement in motion.

ROOF*
by Anita Afonu (8 mins, Ghana/NAFTI, 2009)

With the upsurge of economic hardships, one basic human need-Shelter, has been taken for granted. This is more in demand than supply and a lot of people are forced to live in the city homeless. roof explores the situation of rent in Accra, telling the story of Janet Amponsah who has to struggle everyday with the high demand for accommodation.

SAVE THE FISHERMEN*
by Richard Ocloo (26 mins, Ghana/NAFTI, 2009)

This National Film and Television Institute (NAFTI) final year documentary was inspired by a tragedy of seven experienced Ghanaian fishermen whose canoe was overrun by an American oil supply ship on July 4, 2007. It explores the dangers and hardships fishermen in Ghana encounter in relation to bigger vessels on the high seas and tackles the issue of the pair trawling fishing methods.

CRIES OF THE CHOIR*
by Sebastien Tendeng | Premiere in Ghana
(21 mins, Senegal, 2010)

Cries of the choir is the tragic situation of the population of Guet Ndar, small traditional village of fishermen, in Saint-Louis (Senegal). This village is located in the Langue de Barbarie (Barbary tongue) between the sea and the river. Stuck between the increasing water level and an overpopulation, the inhabitants must live in cramped conditions in small houses gathering sometimes up to 50 persons. In front of this unbearable promiscuity, Doudiang Seck, a young father of Guet Ndar makes us fall into this population’s heart who shouts in chorus his despair.

CAMP HEALING*
by Elizabeth E. K. Coleman (25 min., Ghana/NAFTI, 2010) 7.00 pm

CAMP HEALING is a final year NAFTI documentary that focuses on activities of some Healing Camps, which attempt to treat psychiatric patients. The video tackles the potential conflict entailed in such spiritual healing and discusses the human right implications of their enterprise.

TWILIGHT REVELATIONS: Episodes in the Life & Times of Emperor Haile Selassie**
by Yemane Demissie (58 mins, Ethiopia, 2009)
7.45 pm

Twilight Revelations: Episodes in the Life & Times of Emperor Haile Selassie is a 58-minute documentary film that explores and analyzes watershed events during the reign of the Ethiopian emperor. Using a wealth of archival footage and photographs, the film reexamines the imperial administration through the eyes of numerous individuals who played important roles in the monarchy. The featured witnesses include attorneys, ministers of education, information and planning, a general, a Supreme Court justice, members of the royal family, the Emperor’s favorite pilot, parliamentarians, high-ranking civil servants, and members of the imperial household. The observations and narratives of these individuals shed new light on the personality, leadership style and humanity of the last and final Ethiopian emperor.

MERE BI**
by Ousmane William MBaye
9.00 pm (55 mins, Senegal, 2008)

Senegal’s first journalist, now 82 rainy seasons old, Annette Mbaye d’Erneville has been very early, concerned by the development of her country. Militant from the first hours of the woman’s emancipation cause, she has been a pioneer activist and anti-conformist. “Capturing a generation of pioneers who are our mothers, capturing my mother!” Born in Sokone in 1926 as a child of the colonial period, she is torn by her education “vieille France” and her love for her country of origin and Serer tradition. During her university education in Paris in 1947, she immersed herself in the intellectual circles of the 50s and met those who built the independence throughout Africa. There, she founded a family, recorded her firsts radio programs, got a journalism diploma. In 1957, she returned to Senegal to serve her country.

The Senegalese writer, Boubacar Boris Diop, described Annette d’Erneville, as follows: “It is that having lived our century as a true communication woman, a lot of other destinies encountered hers…her memory is still sharp and when we listen to her, it is so surprising to hear her recount so many famous historic characters or unknown people and most of all, from so many different generations.”

CAMP HEALING*
by Elizabeth E. K. Coleman (25 min., Ghana/NAFTI, 2010) 6.00 pm

CAMP HEALING is a final year NAFTI documentary that focuses on activities of some Healing Camps, which attempt to treat psychiatric patients. The video tackles the potential conflict entailed in such spiritual healing and discusses the human right implications of their enterprise.

TWILIGHT REVELATIONS: Episodes in the Life & Times of Emperor Haile Selassie**
by Yemane Demissie (58 mins, Ethiopia, 2009)
6.30 pm

Twilight Revelations: Episodes in the Life & Times of Emperor Haile Selassie is a 58-minute documentary film that explores and analyzes watershed events during the reign of the Ethiopian emperor. Using a wealth of archival footage and photographs, the film reexamines the imperial administration through the eyes of numerous individuals who played important roles in the monarchy. The featured witnesses include attorneys, ministers of education, information and planning, a general, a Supreme Court justice, members of the royal family, the Emperor’s favorite pilot, parliamentarians, high-ranking civil servants, and members of the imperial household. The observations and narratives of these individuals shed new light on the personality, leadership style and humanity of the last and final Ethiopian emperor.

ROADS TO 2010*
by Jaime Villareal | Premiere in Ghana
7.30 pm (27 mins, Chile, South Africa, US, 2009)

Roads to 2010 is a documentary that shows life in South Africa just one year before the Soccer World Cup Kicks Off. This piece will explore the great effort the country is making to organize this soccer tournament analyzing all the social implications of having this big event for the first time in Africa. To achieve this, the piece will be composed of three separate children stories that are related in one way or another to the World Cup. The idea is to establish a representative social picture through three specific different characters filmed in daily life.

KINSHASA SYMPHONY**

by Claus Wischmann and Martin Baer (98 mins, Germany/Congo, 2009)
8.30 pm

Kinshasa Symphony shows how people living in one of the most chaotic cities in the world have managed to forge one of the most complex systems of human cooperation ever invented: a symphony orchestra. It is a film about the Congo, about the people of Kinshasa and about music.

SOLIDARITY IN SAYA: An Afro-Bolivian Music Movement*
by Maya Jensen | Premiere in Ghana
6.00 pm (30 mins, Bolivia, 2009)

This documentary examines the traditional Afro-Bolivian Saya music and the recent movement that uses this music to pursue their social and political needs. For centuries, Afro-Bolivians have remained isolated in rural poverty as subsistence farmers since the abolition of slavery. In recent decades, there has been a wave of urban migration, as new generations seek opportunity. While these youths face alienation and discrimination in their new urban environment, they build a supportive community around the Saya music group, which serves as a refuge from marginalization in mainstream Bolivian society. The social cohesion and unity cultivated within the Saya group has become a platform for political activism to confront the invisibility of the Afro-Bolivian minority. Rather than standing idle while the colonial hegemonic system of racial hierarchy defines them, the Afro-Bolivian Saya group members empower themselves by defining their own history and identity through these music performances.

CLOSING CEREMONY
7.00 pm

THE GENOME CHRONICLES
by John Akomfrah
7.30 pm (30 mins, UK 2008)

The Genome Chronicles references previously unseen Super 8 footage taken by the artist Donald Rodney and is interlaced with Akomfrah’s personal film archive. The film is the hybrid result of the fusing together of these two image obsessions and two sets of investigations to raise a new set of concerns, concerns on the relationship between pain and the imagination, between memory and identity, between memorial and remembrance.

The director uses a montage of sounds to explore overlapping concerns on the ethics of image making, legacy and inheritance, and the unspoken perlis of patrimony and kinship.

BARIGA BOY**
by Femi Odugbemi | Premiere in Ghana in the presence of the filmmaker Femi Odugbemi
8.00 pm (26 mins, Nigeria 2010)

The poverty and deprivation of ghetto life is no barrier, rather it is the source of inspiration for the dynamic and politically-charged dance drama of Segun Adefila and the Crown Troupe. From the inner city slums of Bariga in Lagos, Adefila and an unlikely band of street performers create a guerilla theatre of inspiring music and dance drama with themes that parody the sensitive contradictions of the politics and government of Nigeria.

Featuring landmark music and dance performances and incisive commentaries from leading Nigeria culture personalities such as Ahmed Yerima, Francesca Emmanuel, Duro Oni, Tunde Kelani and Jahman Anikulapo,“Bariga Boy” is a gripping experience of how one artiste’s creative consciousness is fired by the urban ghetto experience.

RECEPTION
9.00 pm