Escape to Africa

>> North meets South in the 17th edition of the Vues d'Afrique film fest

by SIOBHÀN O'CONNOR

Filmgoers sick of the blockbusting flicks that tend to emerge this time of year will be pleased to know that as far as world cinema is concerned, they're covered for the next week at least. With a flurry of celluloid celebrating African, Caribbean and diasporic culture, the 17th annual Vues d'Afrique film fest opens this weekend with what appears to be its most impressive lineup to date. This year's fest--which is scheduled to stormtroop the Imperial, NFB and MMFA cinemas as of Friday, April 20--has a topical North-South theme, highlighting filmmakers of African and Caribbean descent from both hemispheres, spanning 28 countries from all over the Americas, Africa and Europe. Close to 70 films are set to hit the silver screens--here are a few suggestions.

Fact and fiction

The doc section of the fest is full of the kind of details your history teacher never told you. While Canadians are pretty quick to point the finger south of the border whenever the subject of black civil rights comes up, Roger McTair's haunting NFB doc Journey to Justice uncovers some of the pioneers of our own civil rights movement. Journey, which clocks in at under and hour, pays tribute to a six Canadians who paved the rocky road to change for black Canadians. Among them is Canada's answer to Rosa Parks, a woman names Viola Demond who refused to give up her seat in the white section of a movie theatre, as well as Hugh Burnette and Bromley Armstrong who took on the Ontario government in the 1940s.

Another Canadian entry that uncovers sordid bits of Canadian history is David Sutherland and Jennifer Holnes's Speakers for the Dead, a doc about the history of black settlers, made up of ex-slaves and black Loyalists, in a rural town in Ontario near Collingwood. The doc traces the history of the community from the 1820s through the present, giving voice to people who, like thousands of others, were displaced and largely forgotten around the time of the Confederation.

Documentarian Georges Kamanayo takes on interracial relationships in colonial Rwanda with his Kazungu, le métis. Under French rule, interracial relationships were strictly verboten and babies born in said circumstances were taken from their parents. Kamanayo was one such child (dad was French, mom was Rwandan); with Kazungu he takes a difficult trip down memory lane sorting through the conditions of his upbringing. The topical South African entry, Le Village des vierges by Caroline Dumay, takes a look at a group of women who retreat from society and "reclaim their virginity" in response to the rampant spreading of HIV and AIDS.

Jean Odoutan's Djib is a promising and intriguing feature about a 13-year-old dreadlocked, baby-faced boy who's struggling to get by while staying true to his life philosophy, that "a black man should never let himself be treated like a nigga by another black man." The Ivory Coast-born Roger Gnoan M'Bala takes bold look at African history with his feature-length Adanggaman. Fusing history with tribal lore, M'Bala look at some African sovereigns who were complicit with colonialists in the time of slavery.

Short shorts

Two whirlwind shorts from the NFB are Martine Chartrand's Black Soul and Christopher Changes His Name from the Burkina Faso-born Cilia Sawadogo. Chartrand's animated short is a beautiful if brief 10-minute trip through key moments in black history. Without any dialogue (save a clip from Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I have a dream" speech), Chartrand literally paints stories under the camera's lens--with a simple brush stroke, a grandmother's curls transform into a cotton field. Sawadogo's Chrisopher, on the other hand, is a lighthearted short that fuses a Trinidadian folktale with a real-live kid named Christopher. The young boy hates his all-too-common name and, after a chat with his Trinidadian aunt, resolves to change his name to Tiger.

The Egyptian-born Ethiopian-raised Lucy Gebre-Egziabher offers At the Second Traffic Light, a truly multiculti 20-minute entry. As the title indicates, it's set at a traffic light where a Jew, an African cabby, an Asian woman, an Indian guy, a paraplegic black man and a white truck driver (among others) get in a colossal car accident, which causes a traffic jam, and they all have to work together to get out of their shared mess.

The 17th annual Vues d'Afrique film fest runs from April 20-28 at various cinemas. For details call 284-3322 or go to www.vuesdafrique.org