Movie reviews

AFRYKAMERA

AFROSZORTY VOL. 2 - AFRICA CALLING

This set comprised of 8 short films:

PRECIOUS HAIR & BEAUTY

Watchable. Immaculately acted, with a funny sci-fi style disappearance - a guy gets kicked out into space - and typical black hairdresser chatter. Funny, surprising but with no plot as such.

ASTEL

Watchable. Beautiful cinematography and colourful clothes. Immaculately acted. The story, which starts with a muezzin's call for the dawn prayer and ends with Astel donning a headscarf, although simple, doesn't express much, maybe it's the actors that don't.

JUA KALI (HOT SUN)

Recommended. The sun shines strong on what rich people (black in this case) leave for cleaners. Immaculately acted.

CAI-BER

Recommended. A gripping thriller on Egypt and leaving the police state. The ruse is as simple as leaving a backpack in a club. Immaculately acted. It ends during the end credits when an off-screen announcement from the plane is heard.

A LISBON  AFFAIR

Watchable. An unfaithful couple start-up an affair while musing on how expelling the Moors drove slavery and indirectly led to them meeting in Lisbon. A forced fact connection though.

At least it's immaculately acted.

هو ميت الآن (HE'S DEAD NOW)

Watchable. A black and white, immaculately acted film about men's promiscuity in Egypt and about conscience. The story's incomprehensible. But the imam's singing impressively echoes.

STILL LIFE

Watchable. Black females pose dressed up for white women's paintings - shallow and pointless, even if intriguing artistically. Immaculately acted though.

IRREPROCHABLE (FLAWLESS)

Recommended. A gripping tale of a black pupil afraid of disappearing if she's imperfect. Immaculately acted

The director, Anaïs Lonkeu, says she's wanted to be in movies since 13 because she felt invisible. No dad in the picture because her own passed away, so she's dedicated the film to him, he had no chance to see it. It's her first short film, actually her graduation film from film school. This story is about the fact no one can be perfect. She smokes. Times are changing so people went to see such films in France. It's a kid's film. She's still happy with the story but not with camera angles, she feels she'd do it better now. (In my view, it's perfect now.) She finds the Little Mermaid polemics funny - a mermaid doesn't even exist. She's working on her second short film. Growing up she did gymnastics for 9 years "with competitions and stuff". Her protagonist is 23 and the only black gymnast. 

UNDERNEATH: CHILDREN OF THE SUN AND Q&A WITH DIRECTOR DAVID KIRKMAN

Watchable. This full-length film is less professional than the short ones mentioned above. The realistic slave story is fine but I couldn't find any rhyme or reason to the sci-fi layer, with all this going to and fro in time and parallel timelines. The plot is full of cliches and yet diverges into 3 parallel timelines. It's appalling technically, dialogues aren't clearly audible, sound mono or are metallic, some scenes are in odd green or blue light. And what on earth was the director thinking playing music, loud in that, during most of the dialogues?! Wooden acting of sound parts is annoying too. 

He was making short fun films for 1.5 years. He made the movie because he wanted to see more blacks in space. He hadn't heard of afrofuturism before. Till last month when they were posting the 3rd act he didn't know what would come out of it. He's not based in LA, he made it in the middle of the US - he had to bring actors from all over. Sound costs tonnes of money. His taste is for music to engross you. The complicated storyline, with 3 different timelines was a plan from the beginning. He's going to continue work on this one, to get it off the ground. He sees some "overarching idea" and "there are certainly some deep things in there". He's a big "Star Wars" fan. He read few books on slavery which was traumatising. He admits his movie was inspired by many sci-fi films. The filming was "organic: let's try this, let's try that". He's 25 and proud of making a feature film: "we were quite resourceful", "some people first time acting, some people first being on set". As for film, he sees it as the most powerful medium and hopes to "plant some seeds". With his short films he was creating stories he wanted to see. Now he sees afrofuturism important for re-claiming imagination. "The Black Panther" opened the floodgates of afrofuturism.

KOLO FILOZOFII POSTKOLONIALNEJ ON AFROFUTURISM AGAIN

There's no opposition of science fiction and fantasy, the future is based on history.

NO SIMPLE WAY HOME AND Q&A WITH DIRECTOR AKUOL DE MABIOR

Watchable. It's a bit on the slow side, family-oriented and told from a very privileged position by a young girl from a presidential family so it's a bit naive, especially in terms of the civil war whose atrocities are never mentioned, only vague 'trauma' is. But it shows how difficult it is to bring about stability to the country economically damaged by a war, politically torn apart and resentful. In fact she made a documentary on finding her feet as a South Sudanese returning from exile. 

The challenges she sees is that women in Sudan are expected to be married with children and not too outspoken. Coming from such a prominent family, they're often asked if they want to get into politics. Juba is the capital city but just a few minutes out of Juba if you take a boat down the Nile it's beautiful. Yet the country is chaotic, unstable. She has no vision of the future of South Sudan. She says that to learn more you should come and visit South Sudan. She was born in Cuba, lived mostly in Kenya, studied in South Africa, now she's living in Nairobi and Juba. The film is about her mother so you don't see her father much. The documentary was funded by Kenya, IDFA et al. She acknowledges the fact the film comes from her own limited perspective. She neither earned nor chose her privilege. South Sudan probably has the worst situation in the world. She's seen lots of content with graphic images of people dying in the street but finds it undignified. She's aware of the astronomical numbers of people who died and are dying. She could also cover only a limited period of time. Her mum is still 1 of 5 vice-presidents in South Sudan. Her sister is younger than her, she thinks differently and is still her role model. Her earlier documentary, "On the White now" - on YouTube now, is about a woman's fishery business in South Sudan. Now she's working on another documentary in Kenya. 

LA GRAVITE (GRAVITY)

Recommended. The story of drug dealers in French tower blocks didn't attract me at first but the characters where one dealer is skilled at drawing, another is an inventor and the teens' gang doesn't care about money but has an ulterior motive, unseen in those circles, make it engaging and special. The visuals of the planets aligning, the changing light - natural-looking yet clearly taking on various shades of red are extraordinary in their own right.

The festival used plantable/compostable badges 4th year in a row - I'm a big fan of them and would love other festivals to follow the suit. Too few films at this edition came from the black continent itself. It was more like a black film festival rather than Afrykamera. No catalogue was offered, just a leaflet listing the program so you had to go online to read about the films - quite inconvenient. At least all screenings were on time. For some reason many were deafeningly loud.