Films and documentaries

Two boys (Moussa & Aguid) awake one morning to find that their father has abandoned their family. Shocked, they begin to misbehave. While surreptitiously watching a movie, they think they see their father speaking to them and steal the film to examine the frames. Their mother (Haroun) eventually despairs and sends them to Koranic school. Unhappy, they plan their escape until the eldest boy falls in love with a deaf girl (Khalil).

A travelogue as intimate and focused as a personal essay oscillating between an outside and an inside gaze: on his quest to recover the lost images of his early childhood a tourist from the African diaspora (starring Kenyan actor Sidede Onyulo) encounters a country steeped in ancient magic, facing the twenty-first century with the humour, verve, and ingenuity of its proverbial "Mosquito That Wanted to Marry Man's Ear." AFRICA REPRESENTA is a journey between the city and adobe huts, an encounter with the unknown in the contrasts of an area in Tanzania typical of sub-Saharan Africa: an old chief steeped in the world of magic; two young rappers trying to make it in the city; young Muslim women who feel they're kept like livestock; young Masai warriors who see their future in computer courses, not in their old traditions. The traveller's quest to comprehend reaches the limits of the humanly possible--for "understanding life is like looking into the sun. Far too much light will hit the searching eyes."

Arlit, deuxième Paris is a case study in migration and enviromental racism set in an uranium mining town in the Sahara desert of Niger. Here European corporations extracted nuclear power and profits, leaving behind illness due to radation, contamination and unemployment.

Millions of civilians fled their homes in Southern Sudan during 21 years of war with the north. Now, three years after a peace accord was signed, thousands are returning every week. But there´s not much to come home to: jobs are very scarce, infrastructure is almost non-existent and fear of renewed violence looms large in the minds of many returnees.

Between Hope and Fear follows on family´s journey home from neighbouring Uganda, where they had lived for years as refugees under constant threat of attack by the Lord´s Resistance Army. Until this Ugandan rebel group disarms, few in Southern Sudan will feel entirely safe.

Kaffee ist nach Erdöl der meistgehandelte Rohstoff der Welt und damit ein enormes Geschäft. Die grosse Frage ist jedoch, wie dieser Kuchen weltweit verteilt ist. Wer bekommt den Kuchen, wer die Brösel? Woher kommt der Kaffee und wer verdient daran? Der Film vermittelt in anschaulicher Weise, was jede Tasse Kaffee vom System der Globalisierung erzählt, das die Anbauländer in der Regel benachteiligt. Doch mit dem Fairen Handel gibt es eine gangbare Alternative. Gumutindo, eine kleine Genossenschaft von Kaffeebauern in Uganda, die handwerklich produziert, steht für¨ Alternativen zum konventionellen Kaffeehandel. Am Beispiel dieser Genossenschaft wird deutlich, wie alternative und faire Strukturen für die Produktion und im Handel aussehen können.

Contes cruels de la guerre: Ibéa Atondi uses the story of a return to his home country, Congo-Brazzaville, to adopt an unusual viewpoint on the wars of contemporary Africa. Fascinated by the bloodthirsty madness of Mignon, a Cobra fighter destroyed by alcohol and drugs, the female narrator attempts to grasp the mechanisms that drove him and his companions to abandon all human dignity. No images of violence are used to evoke the horrors of war; this is done through use of metaphor to underpin the statements of victims and executioners.

Courting justice profiles indomitable female judges charged with the task of advancing those rights and enacting transitional justice while confronting the challenges of a male dominated institution. This dynamic film examines the transformation to democracy through the intimate and inspiring stories of women working for change from the beach.

In a small Central African village, boyhood friends Djimi and Koni have come of age under a post-colonial government that levies crippling taxes and legally robs local farmers of their meager crops. When impulsive Koni savagely attacks a visiting government official, the resulting massacre forces the two friends on a journey that will transform them from boys into men, from farmers into soldiers and from villagers into revolutionaries...

Directed by Issa Serge Coelo. In Arabic and French with English subtitles.

Delta Force continues the story of the late Nigerian writer Ken Saro-Wiwa and the Ogoni people, and picks up where The Drilling Fields left off. It starts with a look back at the previous film and updates the story to include the unlawful arrest of Ken Saro-Wiwa and the subsequent implementation of Operation Restore in Ogoni land. This is a military campaign of terror waged against the Ogoni people in an attempt to restore oil production in their area. Delta Force also examines the massive international campaign organized to pressure Nigeria`s dictatorship into releasing Saro-Wiwa, who exposed corruption and injustice with his writings and his activism. Mr. Saro-Wiwa was nevertheless executed by the Nigerian government despite massive international appeals for clemency.  Much of the footage used in Delta Force was secretly shot by the Ogoni themselves.

The film won the Geneva International Television Award in 1996.

On the seacoast of Mauritania, some wait to go to Europe. Khatra, a spirited boy, wants an electric light so he can read at night. A stoic older man, Maata, tries to wire the room. Abdallah, a youth on his way to Europe, says good-bye to his mother. Nana looks back on the death of her daughter and her trip to Europe to inform the father. A girl takes singing lessons. Rooms have small windows, looking out onto foot traffic; transistor radios provide some link beyond. Huge ships anchor in the distance. The train comes through, stopping briefly. Offering a cigarette is a gesture of hospitality. Sand dunes and the ocean dominate the landscape. Hope springs amidst small expectations.

End of the Rainbow explores the human dimensions of industrial gold mining in two remote locations. As the mine's structures and equipment are dismantled in Kalimantan, Indonesian Borneo, then transported and reconstructed to begin gold processing in Guinea, West Africa, what unfolds is an elegiac portrait of the changes brought by the mine and of the universal human desire for a better life.

Each of these three dramatic shorts from Tanzania, Nigeria and Ethiopia offers a critical look at the relationship between fathers and their children in contemporary Africa. Surrender shows the traditional face of paternal tyranny, a father controlling his son's life. In contrast, A Barber's Wisdom satirizes a modern father who compromises his children in his relentless pursuit of money. In The Father, the patriarch in question is ultimately the military dictatorship which terrorized Ethiopia in the '70s and '80s. The critique of fathers in these three films is reminiscent of the blistering indictment of patriarchy in post-independence Africa at the center of Ousmane Sembene's newest film.

The 1994 Rwandan Genocide left the country nearly 70% female handing Rwanda´s women an extraordinary burden and an unprecedented opportunity. An inspiring story of loss and redemption "God Sleeps in Rwanda" captures the spirit of five courageous women as they rebuild their lives, redefining women´s roles in Rwandan society and bringing hope to a wounded nation.

This film will appeal to those who like to know more about exotic lands they will likely never visit. Ouagadougou (Wa-ga-doo-goo), the capital of Burkina Faso (formerly Upper Volta) is such a place. A variety of characters are introduced in this tale of ordinary folks trying to get by in a Third World country. The pace of the film is slow, just as it appears daily life is in this locale. Not slow in the boring sense, but in the unhurried way of life that no doubt reflects an age-old culture in no rush to live like hectic big-city Westerners. Such a plot as there is involves a young Muslim's misadventures as he tries to find honest entry-level work. His father's religious community connections land him a job, but things start to go wrong immediately. This is a gentle family film with no violence, sex or foul language--and no special effects. Just a good story well told and well acted.

House of love: This film explores the lives of sex-workers in the small Namibian harbour of Walvis Bay. The women are dependent for the business on the brief visits of foreign shipping trawlers. They give revealing insights into the choices they have made and why they have made them. Their conflicts to do with notions of love, sex, sin and redemption become the main themes, while the threat of HIV/AIDS hangs ominously in the background.

In a little village somewhere in Africa, a boy named Kirikou is born. But he's not a normal boy, because he knows what he wants very well. Also he already can speak and walk. His mother tells him how an evil sorceress has dried up their spring and devoured all males of the village except of one. Hence little Kirikou decides, he will accompany the last warrior to the sorceress. Due to his intrepidity he may be the last hope of the village.

In his film 'La tête dans les nuages' ('Head in the Clouds') Jean-Marie Teno criticizes the ills of the modern world and the regression of African societies. This short documentary shows the capital of the Cameroon, Yaondé, but might equally show other African cities: heaps of rubbish lie at the edge of streets, academics are out of work, officials unpaid, corruption is the norm, and misery everywhere. For Jean-Marie Teno 'colonization, civilization, independence, then humanitarian talk are merely excuses and theatrical gestures to ensure that Africa remains the place which foreign powers can exploit with a good conscience.'

Worldvide more than two million children and adolescents are living with HIV. Close to 90% of paediatric infections occur in Sub-Saharan Africa. Love, Positively follows the lives of four young adults living in Ugandan capital, Kampala who were infected at birth, and explores the challenges they face growing up with HIV and the courage they need to overcome it.

As much as it was achievement by millions, inside South Africa and beyond, the end of apartheid and the establishment of electoral democracy in South Africa was the glorious human achievement of one individual, one whose personal story completely contains the suffering and victory of his people: Nelson Mandela.

Malaria kills an estimated three million people every year worldwide - most of them in Africa. It is the number one killer in many countries south of the Sahara.

Ethiopia is among the places hardest hit. The disease can kill hundreds of thousands of people in a single epidemic. Extreme poverty, lack of health care and population pressures help the disease spread like wildfire.

After a lion kills the village leader, the expected rains fail to arrive, so a group of warriors are sent to hunt the lion down and kill it in hopes that the rains will come at last.

Memory between Two Shores tells the story of the French colonisation of the Lobi area . No village or family in this region of South-western Burkina Faso will ever forget. Juxtaposed with the written records of the administrators, the oral tradition calls up a century of history, from the arrival of the first Europeans to the present day. The vitality of the spoken word also bears witness to the legacy of this painful past, at the individual, social and religious level. From the past to the present, from the spoken word to the writings of the colonial administrators, «Memory between two Shores» is as much Lobi’s quest for identity as a reflection upon «France the Great Civiliser».

An African student stranded in Paris after losing his government grant discovers a bag of drugs and money while working as a parking garage attendant.

Mamadi is struggling to complete a doctorate at a Parisian university after the government of his country has stopped paying his scholarship. Thanks to his acquaintances in the African community, he finds a job as night watchman in an underground car park. There, a French colleague, Franck, helps the friendly African academic getting around. However, the car park is also a meeting point for dubious characters, and when Mamadi accidentally wrecks a drug trafficking operation, Franck is really hard-pressed to put his pal and himself out of harm's way. Wouldn't Mamadi's home country be the ideal place to escape the gangsters' wrath?

A concert given in Zimbabwe, Africa, by singer Paul Simon, featuring such South African musicians as Miriam Makeba and Hugh Masakela.

The film opens with a striking image: seven children in rags, aged 7 to 19, crawl out from under a Brazzaville market stall where they have spent the night. Moussa Touré picks up with them there and then continues to film as they go about their business in the city, looking for food and odd jobs. Taking advantage of his closeness to the children, the filmmaker sets out to take each back to his family. But the road back is beset with difficulties that exemplify the state of Congolese society.

In 1994, between April and July, the massacre of Tutsis and moderate Hutus left one million dead. Instigated by Fest’Africa, a dozen African authors met four years after the events as writers in residence at Kigali, to try to break the silence of African intellectuals on this genocide. In May 2000, on the occasion of the publication of series of works based on this experience, writers and artists from Africa and elsewhere gathered in Rwanda. Facing up to the scars left by the genocide, Samba Felix N’Diaye manages to find just the right sense of distance to film the inexpressible while nevertheless communicating a message of hope.

Donald Woods is chief editor at the liberal newspaper Daily Dispatch in South Africa. He has written several editorials critical of the views of Steve Biko. But after having met him for the first time, he changes his views. They meet several times, and this means that Woods and his family get attention from the security police. When Steve Biko dies in police custody, he writes a book about Biko. The only way to get it published is for Woods himself to illegally escape the country.

The documentary offers a totally factinating, often hilarious look at the work of one small courthouse in Cameroon. With fierce compassion, the tough-minded state prosecutor Vera Ngassa and cour president Beatrice Ntuba dispense wisdom, wisecracks and justice in fair maeasure.

Worldwide, more than a billion people live in slums. As many as one million of them in the Kenyan slum of Kibera. Slum Survivors tells the stories of a few of them and charts their remarkable courage in the face of extreme poverty.

After years of conflict and isolation, Somalia finds itself once more on the brink. Much of the country is now under the control of the Union of Islamic Courts, but will Somalia´s new actor bring security and development or set it on the path to regional conflict?

From its extraction through sale, use and disposal, all the stuff in our lives affects communities at home and abroad, yet most of this is hidden from view. The Story of Stuff is a 20-minute, fast-paced, fact-filled look at the underside of our production and consumption patterns. The Story of Stuff exposes the connections between a huge number of environmental and social issues, and calls us together to create a more sustainable and just world. It'll teach you something, it'll make you laugh, and it just may change the way you look at all the stuff in your life forever.

During 2004, several West-African countries were affected by the worst locusts invation in 15 years. Millions of hectars of fields and pastures were infested in Mauritania, Senegal, Niger, Burkina Faso, Mali, Chad, the Gambia and Cap Verde, causing a major food security threat for those countries.

The Eighth Plague looks at the origins of the current catastrophe, its devastating consequences for affected population, and the possible solutions to prevent such a disaster in the future.

In April 2002, UNITA rebels signed a ceasefire with the Angolan government bringing to an end more than 30 years of civil war. As soon as the ceasefire was signed millions of Angolans displaced by the fighting began to make a long journey home.

But even with the advent of peace the legacy of war looms large over Angola and its people. Decades of war have left the country in the grip of a structural emergency and in many places of return there are no schools, health posts or jobs. Land mines, by contrast, are everywhere. The Long Journey Home explores the many challanges that await them on their return.

A poverty-stricken father tries to make ends meet for himself and his family. The wily Ananse desperately exploits contemporary realities for a way out.

The wall paintings of the Kassenas women in Burkina Faso, near the border with Ghana, are famous for the beauty of their patterns and the harmony of their colours. In looking at this subject, Katy Lena Ndiaye has chosen to compare and contrast tradition with modernity, seen through the intertwined portraits of three old women and their "grand-daughter", whom they are initiating in their ancestral art. She has made a film whose aesthetic is fully under control, a genuine portrait of an artistic community preoccupied with the issue of how to hand down traditions, of education and memory in an Africa undergoing fundamental change.

The documentary focuses on the tragic humanitarian impact of the conflict, and in particular highlights the vulnerability of children. The film illustrates how thousands of children walk many kilometers every evening to find shelter in the relative safety of towns or camps, for fear of being abducted by the rebels. In towns they sleep in public buildings or the street. These 'night commuters' of northern Uganda are a sober symbol of the terror at large in a conflict the Ugandan government and international community seem unable to end.

Years of political and criminal violence have kept the Central African Republic among the poorest countries in the world. Rebels, soldiers and kidnapping gangs have spread terror in much of the north, where the central government barely exists. More than 200,000 people have fled their homes many of them to squalid conditions in the bush. Even those who have returned home do not feel safe.

A Trip to the Country is a voyage in search of the illusion of modernity, which haunts Cameroonian society; a kind of "tropical modernity" which can be summarized as follows: Everything from Europe is modern, while all things local are archaic and must be discarded.

Filmmaker Dumisani Phakathi returns to his old neighborhood. With a camera on his shoulder, he engages with friends to discuss relationships, sex and love. Strong characters like Phumla and Timothy expose their emotions as they talk intimately about the realities of their street and the choices they have been forced to make. It 's a rock and roll journey that reveals the gaps between everyday life and the AIDS education campaigns that often talk past the very people they are supposed to address. It is the recognition of the people's will to survive in the age of AIDS.

Warrior Marks is a poetic and political film about female genital mutilation from the director of A place of Rage, presented by the Pulitzer Prize winning author of The Color Purple and Possessing the Secret of Joy. Female genital mutilation affects one hundred million of the world´s women and this remarkable film unlocks some of the cultural and political complexities surrounding this issue. Interviews with women from Senegal, Gambia, Burkina Faso, the US and England who are concerned with and affected by genital mutilation are intercut with Walker´s own personal reflections on the subject.

Seydina Insa Wade had his hour of glory in the 1970s. After his departure for France in the 1980s, where he performed in jazz clubs, Seydina Insa Wade was somewhat forgotten by his countrymen and women. Observing that the new generation in Senegal was unfamiliar with his music, he decided to regain contact with his country and returned to Dakar to record his latest numbers. Ousmane William Mbaye followed this return to the home country for two years, and the friendship which grew up between the two men provides us with a sensitive and highly personal portrait of the musician: through his personal statements and songs, we discover a constantly moving, multifaceted personality.

As the founder of folk music in Senegal, Seydina Insa Wade had his hour of glory in the 1970s. After his departure for France in the 1980s, where he performed in jazz clubs, Seydina Insa Wade was somewhat forgotten by his countrymen and women. Observing that the new generation in Senegal was unfamiliar with his music, he decided to regain contact with his country and returned to Dakar to record his latest numbers. Ousmane William Mbaye followed this return to the home country for two years, and the friendship which grew up between the two men provides us with a sensitive and highly personal portrait of the musician: through his personal statements and songs, we discover a constantly moving, multifaceted personality.

Robert Mugabe, anti-colonial guerrilla leader, triumphant victor of the first general election for an independent Zimbabwe, and President for over two decades, gets himself re-elected for another six years. But... to achieve this he has to hound, torture and kill the opposition and their supporters, trigger agricultural chaos and economic ruin, and rig the elections.

Michael Raeburn is a privileged witness of these historical moments and of their aftermath. He grew up in the capital Harare where he also went to university. In 1969 he turned the tables on his British colonial ancestors by making'Rhodesia Countdown' advocating guerrilla war against the white minority government of Ian Smith. After his expulsion from the country, he also wrote the book'Black Fire' in support of the African war effort and of his hero, Robert Mugabe, to whom he became increasingly linked as this film shows.