4th African Film Festival To Hit  WCSU Screens

DANBURY — Western Connecticut State University’s Fourth Annual African Film Festival will kick off in February with the screening of a “rags to riches” story of an indigent rural musician who lives in the Congo.

In all, five films – each followed by an open discussion – will be presented at the university’s Student Center Theater, at 181 White Street. The public is invited, and there is no admission charge for any of the screenings.

Rob Whittemore, an associate professor of anthropology at WCSU, is the founder and organizer of the festival, which celebrates Black History Month. “We have put together an interesting and diverse collection of films made by highly talented and sensitive contemporary African artists – films that will appeal to a broad range of individuals in our diverse community,” Professor Whittemore said.

The first presentation, La Vie Est Belle (Life is Rosy), by Mweze Ngangura and Bernard Lamy, stars Papa Wemba, one of the fabled figures of Congolese music. Not only does the movie, made in then-Zaire and Belgium in 1987, celebrate the influence of African music, it also is a lively precursor of commercial or popular cinema for African audiences.

The film, with French and English subtitles, will be shown on Wednesday, February 2, at 3 pm, and again at 7:30 pm on Friday, February 4.

Other films in the series are Allah Tantou (God’s Will), Temetteme (A Snake Around Himself), Rostov-Luanda and Divine Carcasse.

In Allah Tantou, David Achkar re-creates the quest of his assassinated father for Guinean self-reliance. Mr Achkar uses prison letters and home movies to reconstruct his father’s life. The film will be screened at 3 pm on February 9 and at 7:30 on February 11. The film is in French, with English subtitles.

Temetteme and Rostov-Luanda are part of Double Feature Week that includes a family day on February 19. The former film, by Richard Duplock, is about a 12-year-old boy’s flight from farm to the metropolis of Addis Ababa in pursuit of an education, which turns out to be quite different from what he expected. The dates and times are February 16 at 3 pm, February 17 at 7:30 pm and February 19 at 2 pm.

Rostov-Luanda also to be shown on those dates, is writer/director Abderrahmane Sissako’s story of his search for a former comrade who participated in political and technical training in the Soviet Union. While looking for his friend, Sissako makes a greater find – an irrepressibly resilient Africa. The film is in Portuguese and French, with English subtitles.

The series will conclude with Divine Carcasse, an allegory of colonialism using cars as the medium for the message. It is a tale of technology and post-independence relations rooted, says filmaker Dominique Loreau, in “an object [that] passes from hand to hand, changing its meaning according to how we use it. It is a fiction and reality at the same time.”

The picture will be screened at 3 pm on February 23 and at 7:30 on February 25. Divine Carasse is in French, Fon and Yoruba, with English subtitles.

For more information about the film festival, call WCSU’s Office of Public Relations at 837-8486.