WestConn To Celebrate A Dozen Years Of African Cinema At Annual Festival

DANBURY — Award-winning films by contemporary directors are being featured through Friday, February 29, during the 12th Annual African Film Festival at Western Connecticut State University. The four films featured this year — Forgiveness (which opened the festival last week), Shake Hands with the Devil: The Journey of Romeo Dallaire, Witches in Exile and Umgig — have earned an impressive array of honors, including human rights, audience and best film awards at notable international film festivals.

Presented as part of Black History Month activities at WestConn, the films will present a different title each week. Day and evening screenings will be in the Student Center Theater on the university’s Midtown campus, 181 White Street, and will be free and open to the public. Professor of Anthropology Dr Robert Whittemore, who coordinates the annual festival, will lead an open discussion following each screening.

With two more weeks of screenings left this year, films scheduled include:

*Wednesday, February 20, at noon, and Friday, February 22, at 7 pm: Witches in Exile by director Allison Berg (a 2005 United States/Ghana film in Dagbani and English with English subtitles).

No longer bearing children or performing heavy fieldwork, four elder “witches” take refuge in a village of northern Ghana, a shelter for the accused. An explanatory framework for misfortune within families and villages, witchcraft remains a stigma that takes its toll on lives of those least able to recover from the “slings and arrows” over which they have no control.

*Wednesday, February 27, at noon, and Friday, February 29, at 7 pm: Umgig (Shadow Dancing) by directors Gillian Schutte and Sipho Singiswa (a 2004 South African film in English and Xhosa with English subtitles).

Sipho’s wife, a white “outsider,” films his struggle as a former political prisoner of the infamous Robben Island, trying to help his younger brother Vuyo’s own despair consolidating his gay orientation with his self-doubts as an adopted son. Sipho invokes cultural roots through ritual process, believing in their efficacy, even as Vuyo turns desperately to escape them.

The African Film Festival is sponsored by the WestConn department of social sciences and supported by the WCSU Class of 1961 John Tufts Memorial Fund, the WCSU International Center, Office of Student Affairs, and the Office of Multicultural Affairs and Affirmative Action Programs.

For more information, call the WestConn Office of University Relations at 837-8486.