15 YEARS OF AFRICA FILM FESTIVAL

As most of you don’t know, the Africa Film Festival of Leuven is taking place as we speak. For the 15th time in a row, Guido Convents and Guido Huysmans, better known as ‘the Guido’s’, joined forces to offer the hidden treasures of African moviemaking to all those interested.

For fifteen years already the organizers of the Africa Film Festival continue their quest for movies and documentaries that offer an African perspective to history, to current events, to life. The organizers of the festival are convinced that Africa has something to say about the way we are living today, and as their project is growing over the years, their opinion is shared by many others. Starting off as a little project in Leuven, they evolved and captured the attention of the whole of Flanders, while their expertise of African moviemaking is known beyond Belgian borders. When explaining the idea behind the festival, Guido Convents, one of the founders, speaks of a threefold approach. First of all, the festival tries to promote movies that do not as easily find acceptance in the ‘common’ movie circuit. Next to that he sees the festival as the result of fruitful international cooperation. The third important aspect to bear in mind, is that the movies they introduce show the incredible diversity of ‘realities’ in Africa. The focus on this diversity runs counter with the predominant idea in the West of African homogeneity. The founders of the festival made it into an opportunity to show excellent parts of the continent’s culture and to contradict the stereotype of an ‘immature’ Africa.

CELEBRATION

To celebrate the 15th anniversary, some prominent personalities of the filmfestival industry were invited to speak at an Academic Sitting in Leuven. Although those guests came from different parts of the world, they all had their passion for African movies in common. Some of the speakers voiced their disappointment about the low number of students coming to the movies. To blame the students for being not interested in culture, however, is to overlook the other factors that can explain their low participation. Professor Hesling, active at the centre of media culture and communication technology of K.U.Leuven and invited at the celebration, emphasized that a lot of students simply do not know a lot about African history and culture. That makes it tuff for them to relate to the movies and it makes the Africa in general a topic that is not easy accessible. In fact, the African continent is in many cases neglected. Just as courses about African history or teaching about African politics are hard to find at K.U.Leuven, professor Hesling sees African movies as ‘a blind spot’ in the program of movie studies. He was of the opinion that student, ones they are introduced with the subject, are eager to learn more.

LUMUMBA

Sad to say, but not everybody was equally cheerful about unravelling those African ‘hidden treasures’. The Belgian government did object against displaying the movies Lumumba (Raoul Peck) and Mobutu (Thierry Michel); movies that admittedly deal with more politically sensitive topics. But after watching them, we can acknowledge that the movies are not at all controversial. Next to the fact that the government threatened to censure those movies, a part of the subsidies the festival is normally entitled to, were withhold this year. Although the situation is now depicted as the mistake of an officer of the Congodesk of the ministry of external relationships, the whole case show that the relationship of Belgium with its colonial past stays very problematic. The festival has to function with a lot less financial support than before. In a way, the Belgian government hindered the major goal of the initiators of the festival, to commercialize African movies and get them in distribution, on different fronts. And this in the year of the 50th anniversary of the Independence of Congo. All the fuss about the festival should not take the focus away from what is really important here: To make African moviemakers and actors visible and to listen to what they have to say. |

Africa Filmfestival: April 16th to May 1st at Cinema Zed or Kinepolis Leuven. The full program is available on the website: www.afrikafilmfestival.be.