{"id":15998,"date":"2015-10-13T10:51:20","date_gmt":"2015-10-13T14:51:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/fass\/?p=15998"},"modified":"2024-08-09T07:42:36","modified_gmt":"2024-08-09T11:42:36","slug":"your-guide-to-the-inagural-african-film-festival-of-ottawa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/fass\/2015\/your-guide-to-the-inagural-african-film-festival-of-ottawa\/","title":{"rendered":"Your Guide to the Inaugural African Film Festival of Ottawa"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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\n Your Guide to the Inaugural African Film Festival of Ottawa\n <\/h1>\n \n \n <\/header>\n\n <\/div>\n\n <\/div>\n\n <\/div>\n<\/section>\n\n
\"African<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

AFRICAN FILM FESTIVAL OF OTTAWA (AFFO)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Carleton University\u2019s Film Studies Department and Institute of African Studies, the African Group of Ambassadors and High Commissioners in Canada and the Canadian Film Institute are pleased to present the inaugural African Film Festival of Ottawa (AFFO), <\/b>held over two weeks, on October 16-18 and October 23-25, 2015 <\/b>in the River Building Theater of the Carleton University Campus. <\/b><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The cinemas of Africa have consistently delivered some of most impressive, urgent, and engaged films in contemporary world cinema. The project of this new annual festival is to showcase the best in contemporary African cinema and offer a complex, nuanced and doubly moving image of Africa. It seeks to engage audiences in a conversation on Africa around the moving image by presenting Africa and Africans through the cinematic voices and visions of the continent\u2019s filmmakers themselves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The films selected primarily celebrate emerging voices from across the five regions of the African continent as well as its historical diaspora. They range across a number of genres from futurist to political thriller, melodrama to horror, social realist to fantasy. They are at once celebratory and critical, contemplative and reflexive, elegiac and prospective. The films have been screened, won awards, or entered for nomination at FESPACO (Pan African Film Festival of Ouagadougou), the Durban International Film Festival, the Cannes Film Festival, The Berlin Film Festival, the Toronto International Film Festival, the American Film Institute Film Festival and the Academy Awards (Oscars) among others.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For this first edition of the festival, the following countries are represented (in alphabetical order): Benin, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, C\u00f4te d\u2019Ivoire, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, Ghana, Haiti, Kenya, Madagascar, Morocco, Nigeria, South Africa and Tunisia. Together they represent both the major and emerging film producing countries across the continent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

SCHEDULE OF SCREENINGS AND SYNOPSIS OF THE FILMS<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Fri\/Ven 16 Oct \/ 19:00 (Opening Night!) <\/b><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

AFRICA PARADISE
\n<\/i><\/b>Dir: Sylvestre Amoussou | Benin 2006, | 86 minutes<\/b><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Scene<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Amoussou\u2019s clever comedic satire inverts the world economic and power structures. In his scenario, Europe has become underdeveloped due to acute economic and political crisis, while Africa has been experiencing a very thriving development. Africans are no longer emigrating; it is the Europeans who flee their dire situations to come to Africa. Witness Olivier and Pauline: an engineer and teacher from France, who can no more decently live in their country, and decide to immigrate into the United States of Africa. Unfortunately they don’t manage to get an entry visa and therefore call on a smuggler. From then on their life is turned upside down, and they face the grim realities of immigration: the tenuous position of illegal immigrants, the difficulty to find decent jobs, and the political use of immigration in this other U.S.A. Witty and telling, AFRICA PARADISE is a clever overturning of the geopolitical status quo. English sub-titles<\/b>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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