The 2015 New York African Film Festival Honors Women!

The 2015

New York African Film Festival Honors Women!

Screenings for Tuesday, May 12th, 2015

4:00    100% DAKAR Sandra Krampelhuber, Austria/Senegal, 2014, 62min and THE PROPHECY Marcia Juzga, Senegal, 2015, 20min.

6:00   Women in the Media - Shorts Program #2

Introduction by MaameYaa Boafo and Nova Scott-James

THE SUMMER OF GODS
Eliciana Nascimento, Brazil, 2014, 20min; co-presented by Cinema Tropical

A young girl named Lili connects with her Afro-Brazilian religious heritage on a summer visit with family to their ancestral village in rural Brazil. During her stay, she encounters orishas (African gods) who help her find peace with a gift that had previously vexed her.

BURKINA, ALL ABOUT WOMEN 
Nicole Mackinlay Hahn, USA/Burkina Faso, 2015, 11min.
 

Seeking to undo stereotypes about African women by looking at the professional lives of women in Burkina Faso, the film talks to a firefighter, a swimmer, a mushroom biologist, a mechanic, an astrophysicist, a rapper, and more—allowing women (all inspired by the legendary Princess Yennenga) to give voice to their own unique experience.

HANDMADE IN THAMAGA 
Nova Scott-James, USA/Botswana, 2014, 5min.
 

Handmade in Thamaga chronicles the founding and work of Bothlalo Centre, a women’s pottery collective and business in the small rural village of Thamaga, Botswana.

BUS NUT
Akosua Adoma Owusu, Ghana/USA, 2014, 7min.
 

Bus Nut rearticulates the 1955 Montgomery Bus Boycott, a political and social protest against U.S. racial segregation on the public transit system of Montgomery, Alabama, and its relationship to an educational video on school-bus safety. Actress MaameYaa Boafo restages a vintage video while reciting press-conference audio of Rosa Parks on a re-created set in New York City.

SISTER OYO (SOEUR OYO)
Monique Mbeka Phoba, Belgium/Democratic Republic of the Congo, 2014, 24min.
 

Set in the Belgian Congo in the 1950s, Sister Oyo tells the story of Godelive, a schoolgirl at the Catholic boarding school Mbanza-Mboma, the premier French-language school for Congolese girls. She is to be westernized, following the will of her parents, but the memory of her grandmother intervenes…

CHOLO
Muzna Almusafer, United Arab Emirates/France, 2014, 21min.
 

The dark-skinned 11-year-old Cholo meets his fair-skinned younger stepbrother Abdullah for the first time. Although strikingly different, the two boys enjoy a crackling chemistry.

PANIC BUTTON
Libby Dougherty, South Africa, 2014, 25min.
 

From the moment that Tshepo, a security guard, breaks through Jenny’s multi-locked door to save her, she feels as if she’s been swept off her feet. But as Jenny imagines herself falling in love with him, an unhealthy, delusional obsession begins to take shape.

9:00   MOSSANE Safi Faye, Senegal, 1996, 105min.