New York African Film Festival 2012 - 21st Century: The Homecoming

The 2012 New York African Film Festival, presented under the banner 21st Century: The Homecoming is a two-month multi-venue event in New York City exploring notions of home and homeland through films and their protagonists…

As a tribute to their growing presence in the medium, women filmmakers will have pride of place. Mariette Monpierre mixes melodrama and memoir in the Guadeloupean film Elza, while Rumbi Katedza tells a universal story of women’s struggles in Zimbabwe in the hilarious and touching Playing Warriors. In the attempt to come to grips with contemporary realities, documentary has become a favored format, and it makes up a great proportion of this year’s offerings: in The Creators, Laura Gamse analyzes the role of artists in contemporary South Africa; postcolonial and feminist strife in Kenya are at the center of Branwen Okpako’s work The Education of Auma Obama, complemented by Jane Munene’s portrait of that countries brave matriarch Monica Wangu Wamwere: Unbroken Spirit. Cameroonian Osvalde Lewat pushes the limits of the documentary genre in her most recent experimental work in Gaza Sderot, Last Exit… (Text from website)