A sequence shoot filmed in Gualey, dubbed as one of the most dangerous neighbourhoods in the Dominican Republic. Artist performer, Melymel dispels the myth as the locals line the streets, eager to be a part of her vision.

In an isolated village where people lived happily the monotonous routine of their daily lives leads the inhabitants to venture outside the boundary of the village.

Exclusive screening of the animated trailer for Malika Warrior Queen
From Multi-award winning, Roye Okupe. The Nigerian graphic novel and comic book creative and the CEO of YouNeek studios. The talent behind the first Nigerian animated superhero, E.X.O The Legend of Wale Williams.

The trailer was exclusively screened at Afrikans on Film Festival in 2016, now brings to the big screen, the much lauded comic book heroine, Malika the Afrikan Warrior Queen of the Azzaz empire!

From being swindled by a immigration officer to fighting with a hairdresser. I’m Living in Ghana Get Me Out OF HERE are short stories about the filmmakers experience migrating from London to Ghana.

QnA with Director Comfort Arthur

Battledream Chronicle is a sci-fi/drama animated series created by Alain Bidard, based on his ground breaking multi-award winning feature film story of Syanna, a young slave who is trying to regain her freedom in a futuristic world where plantations are video games.

QnA (via skype) with Director Alain Bidard

DC-native Sabrina Heard survives drug addiction and an HIV diagnosis. Over the last seventeen years, her life has made a 360-degree turn. This short film was nominated for an Emmy by The National Capital Chesapeake Bay Chapter of The National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.

“Proclamation Punctuation” is an enthralling fashion film centered on a fabulously fascinating woman reciting a short soliloquy paying homage to her love for using exclamation points in her missives. Periods are so period, where as an exclamation point livens up a sentence!

There is simply nothing worse than a long dragged out sentence ending in an uninspiring dull dot! So when exclamation points are your philosophy on life, one must always keep it on the upbeat!!

The psychological journey of a climate refugee who lost his house and his entire family during hurricane Maria.

This is the story of his journey from the darkness back to the light.

Bahamas in our hearts

The little Fish and the Crocodile is a fable from the rainforest in the Odzala National Park in the Republic of Congo. A story set in the second largest rain forest in the world and told by the children of the Sanza Mobimba Kindergarden.

This beautiful and captivating short film, forms a part of the Tales Of Us project, an ongoing multimedia series that offers a new approach to communicating the urgency of protecting the world’s most powerful and fragile ecosystems and the people who call them home.

Followed by a discussion:
Francine Mukwaya speaks with filmmaker Rudy Mandio and activist and filmmaker Madu Dube.

Sending love and respect to hurricane victims of the Bahamas as we discuss climate change

‘The Date’ is a romantic comedy about two modern 30 something Namibian women, Lahja & Niki, who set up their friend, Hawa, on a blind date, the first date she’s been on in years. ‘The Date’ starts off simple enough when Hawa meets her blind date, Chris (Bret Kamwi) but the tables soon turn resulting in unexpected and comical mayhem for everyone involved.

From being swindled by a immigration officer to fighting with a hairdresser. I’m Living in Ghana Get Me Out OF HERE are short stories about the filmmakers experience migrating from London to Ghana.

QnA with Director Comfort Arthur

EKO is a short documentary film that is an Adaptation of a Poem about the realities of Living in Lagos state, Nigeria. It smoothly combines the poem narration with visuals to compliment.

It also gives a first-hand narrative through Vox pop from random volunteer residents on the streets of Lagos (EKO) as they tell us about their experiences living in Africa’s most populous city.

Cristina is an anti-migrant activist, full of racial prejudice. An incident involving a kenté cloth brings Cristina and Hikima together. Cristina doesn’t imagine that Hikima is a refugee because she is an English speaker and doesn’t look like a homeless girl. Cristina thinks that she is a tourist.

I am kenté refers to a « no meeting », the kenté (traditional fabric from Ghana) is the only link between them. This fabric reminds Hikima her country and give her hope for the future.

Alienation, confusion, academic prejudice and resistance – The real price to pay for a PHD. This experimental short film tackles feelings of racial prejudice and alienation, through the real life PhD thesis of TC Smith.

QnA with Director Peter Lowe

From being swindled by a immigration officer to fighting with a hairdresser. I’m Living in Ghana Get Me Out OF HERE are short stories about the filmmakers experience migrating from London to Ghana.

QnA
Art Terry discusses the racialised politics of creativity with Comfort Arthur (I’m Living in Ghana, Get me out of Here) and Peter Lowe (The Conversation).

Created by children at The Green, guided by The Rainbow Collective.

A tribute to The Windrush Generation.

Slavery may have been the catalyst, but culture and passion formed this sound in Trinidad & Tobago. The steelpan (steel drum) can take the claim of being the only acoustic instrument invented in the 20th century. However, this sound not only moves people today, but it paralleled the island’s history of colonization and the demand for independence.

The film highlights the precursors of the steelpan and the creation of the instrument until it gained international recognition in Britain in 1951. Interviews from steelpan legends, such as Ellie Mannette, Sterling Betancourt, Cliff Alexis and Ray.

What does the immigrant fantasy feel like? Adeyemi Michael reimagines his mother’s idea of moving from Nigeria to Peckham in Entitled, a short film about leaving your country of origin.

Adeyemi Michael Fantasy Documentary ‘Entitled’ for Channel 4’s Random Acts screened at BFI London Film Festival (2018) and London Short Film Fest and won Best Short Film at the Screen Nation Awards (2019).

QnA
Followed by a discussion with the Director Adeyemi Michael and his mother Abosede Afolashade hosted by Akua Gyamfi The British Blacklist

“Raised in Tottenham, North London, Zena Edwards has become known as one the most unique voices of performance poetry to come out of London. She is published in several anthologies including Dance the Guns to Silence (Flippedeye publishing).

Zena has worked with internationally acclaimed choreographer and dancer Akram Khan (Xenos), Visual Artist – Theaster Gates (Soul Manufacturing Company) and radical Film Maker Fahim Alam, (Riots Reframed), and The Last Poets.

‘Leave or Remain’ is filmed on one of the thousands of migrant boats that have attempted to reach Europe, containing passengers fleeing poverty, war and persecution. Shipwrecked migrant boats and migrant deaths have been recorded in European waters since 1988, for 31 years

The true number of migrant deaths at sea is unknown as many of the bodies are never found. With the global climate crisis the numbers of those being forced to migrate are set to increase unimaginably.

This haunting docu-film speaks to the tragedy of forced migration, positing echoes of colonisation..

6:35

Our youngest performer of 15 years, Mya Henry will be reciting a selection of Aida Silvestri’s poems with themes from journeys and experiences of Eritrean refugees into the United Kingdom and exploring the idea of home and belonging and non-metropolitan Towns.

Sembène’s account of a young Senegalese woman who takes a job in the home of a bourgeois French family recalls Jean Rouch’s tales of everyday struggle in urban West Africa. But, crucially, the perspective is completely that of the African, not the Africanist (who Sembène once accused of ‘looking at us like insects’).
Parental guidance advised

Film followed by discussion;
Father of African cinema, Ousmane Sembene’s controversial vision of migration hosted by Caro Sika

Music

EKO is a short documentary film that is an Adaptation of a Poem about the realities of Living in Lagos state, Nigeria. It smoothly combines the poem narration with visuals to compliment.

It also gives a first-hand narrative through Vox pop from random volunteer residents on the streets of Lagos (EKO) as they tell us about their experiences living in Africa’s most populous city.

This candid short film explores the flux of a rapidly changing and vibrant, South London district.

From 1884 to 1914, a small belt of land between the British Gold Coast Colony and French-governed Dahomey was part of the German overseas empire in Africa.

“Togoland”, the later Togo and the eastern part of today’s Ghana, experienced the first German capitulation in the early days of WWI.

European rule left its marks on people’s minds, even more than a century after the forced pull-out of one of the major European players in the competitive “great colonial game” and more than half a century after the African Independences. Lom. – Adibo – Yendi – Kamina – Wahala: present-day glimpses of a journey into the past.

Madu Dube is a 23 year-old filmmaker from the East rand, Johannesburg. “Birth of a nation” is her first feature documentary. In 2019 it was selected for the prize of the Flemish commission competition of UNESCO at Africa film festival (in Belgium).

In the Quilombo de Damásio, of Maranhão – the joke of the “Portuguese dance” is part of the extensive June celebrations.
How can African people worship a coloniser tradition, after centuries of pain?
Taking advantage of these and other cultures, many of the Maroons of Damasio re-signified the Lusitanian legacies, reworking speeches and recreating memories.

This short documentary explores the continued dance of identity, focussing on a family of dancers as they recall stories, inviting us to reflect on relationships of power, oppression, fear and pride.

DC-native Sabrina Heard survives drug addiction and an HIV diagnosis. Over the last seventeen years, her life has made a 360-degree turn. This short film was nominated for an Emmy by The National Capital Chesapeake Bay Chapter of The National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.

Ayisat Oriyomi is a 23yrs old, wife, seamstress, mother, and boxer living in the Mile 12 area in Lagos, Nigeria.

Through determination, grit and the love and hopes of family, Ayisat diligently trains and fights her way towards a spot at the 2018 Commonwealth Games.

This documentary is about the loss of identity and its systemic impact on black males. By exploring the complexities of mental slavery, Sankofa calls its audience to free themselves from the system in which they were born.

Sankofa means “it is not taboo to fetch what is at risk of being left behind” in the Twi language of Ghana. The present is a result of the past, so what can we do now to better the future?

Q&A

Followed by a discussion with Alexis Miller line producer
and Therapist Marie-Line Charler Dele Odutola (Film Consultant Breaking Forth)

He was forced to leave Nigeria to save himself and his love. The journey of a gay African refugee seeking asylum in Germany.

Gifts from Babylon is an intriguing short film exploring the impact of Africa-EU migration through the lens of a Gambian return-migrant.

The film captures the personal and cultural conflicts that arise when Amadou, a young West African, returns to his home country after having lived illegally in the once promised paradise, Europe AKA Babylon.

Perma gold mine, Benin.
Some dream to find something. Others give up, feeling the mine is empty. Some dig relentlessly, hoping to become rich. And some have died in the process. And a few people still say “here, nobody dies”.

Duke Vin and Count Suckle arrived in the UK in 1954 and Duke Vin would soon set up the first sound system in the UK.

They brought with them a sound that was sweeping across Jamaica and would later change the face of music in the UK.

This was the sound of Ska!