THE AFRICAN COURIER. Reporting Africa and its Diaspora! The African Courier is an international magazine published in Germany to report on Africa and the Diaspora African experience. The first issue of the bimonthly magazine appeared on the newsstands on 15 February 1998. The African Courier is a communication forum for European-African political, economic and cultural exchanges, and a voice for Africa in Europe.
The biggest festival dedicated to African filmmaking in Germany marks an important milestone from 21 September to 1 October 2017. About 80 new feature films, documentary films and short films will be presented in the presence of 20 directors as Afrika Film Festival celebrates 25 years of its existence in Cologne.
Already the prologue of the Africa Film Festival has met with great interest. The feature film CEDDO of 1977, a classic of the African cinema about the violent advance of Muslim and Christian colonizers in Sub-Saharan African countries, made its debut in Cologne. It was shown on 6 September under the series “Revolution in the film”, which was presented in the Film Forum.
In front of 80 spectators, Karl Rössel from FilmInitiativ, organisers of the festival, explained that the Senegalese writer and filmmaker Ousmane Sembène (1 January 1923 – 9 June 2007) in many respects could be described as a “revolutionary”. He did not only use the medium of film as the “evening school of the ordinary People” but also as a contribution to the formation of political consciousness in his country. Sembène was also the first director south of the Sahara, to shoot a film in the national language Wolof. The legendary director was the first to make a full feature film in sub-Saharan Africa and also the first African to present a film at the Venice festival.
The short film series AFRIPEDIA about the avantgarde youth culture in Ghana, South Africa, the Ivory Coast and Senegal, was also well attended.
Astonished visitors at the opening of the photo exhibition “Angola Cinemas – A fiction of freedom”!
Visitors were surprised by the avant-garde architecture of the cinemas, built in Angola under Portuguese colonial rule from 1930 to 1975.
The exhibition, designed by the Goethe Institut, is based on a photo book by Walter Fernandes and Miguel Hurst. The latter was dedicated to presenting the exhibition especially from Luanda to Cologne and told the audience at the opening that some of the buildings were now happily renovated and the first ones were being used again.
The exhibition is open at the IHK (Unter Sachsenhausen 10-26) until 3 November.
Contact and Information:
FilmInitiativ Köln e.V., Heidemannstr. 76a, 50825 Köln
mail@filminitiativ.de / Tel: +49-221-46 96 243
www.filme-aus-afrika.de / www.films-from-africa.com / www.films-d-afrique.com
