Africa Is a Country

New Films

Africa Is a Country Podcast
African Five-a-Side Podcast

New Films

By
Sean Jacobs

This list is partly self-indulgent. It is also a way–hopefully weekly–for me to keep an online record of films I still would like to see. Here’s a few.

First up, Lotte Stoofs’s documentary film about the life of a landmark hotel in Beira, Mozambique:

“Swahili Fighting Words,” a feature documentary about a Tanzanian filmmaker’s search for his family roots:

“The Encounter,” a short about “a young white woman on a search for inner peace, [who] gets stuck in an elevator with an older African man”:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DCkWB5Vc7_k

Then there’s “Umkhungo,” a short film by a Johannesburg director that weds Hollywood and popular South African beliefs about the supernatural:

There seems to be a few films with themes on gay beauty competitions in Cape Town. We’ve blogged here about “Glitterboys and Ganglands.” Now there’s “Sisterhood,” a film about 3 farmworkers who dream of acceptance and winning a local drag competition.

The documentary “Blood in the Mobile”:

Director Franck Piasecki Poulsen embarks on a personal mission to uncover the origin of the minerals in his Nokia cell phone. Navigating the bureaucracy, corruption, and dangers of eastern Congo, he arrives at Bisie, one of the largest and most notorious illegal mines in the region, where armed groups maintain tight control and inhumane conditions, and child labor runs rampant. Determined to know if his cell phone is funding conflict in Congo, Poulsen works his way into Nokia’s corporate offices, where he confronts executives about their mineral supply chain.

Here’s the trailer:

Tom hasn’t yet seen the film “Blue Bird,” by Belgian director Gust van den Berghe, about “two African children” who leave “their village” to find their lost blue bird. Yes the bird is literally black. I think it is supposed to be a fable or a fairy tale:

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RK7qRw_qe6g&w=560&h=315]

Finally, some short films in their entirety. (These I have watched):

I like the 3 shorts on cultural producers from the DRC made by Cultural Resistance. First up, “Thembo Kash: Cartooning for Justice,” a 5 minute film about a political cartoonist. Sample opinion: “I’ve drawn Congo as a cake. People are helping themselves, but the Congolese don’t benefit from it”:

Then there’s a film about rapper Lexxus Legal, “a long-time veteran of the hip-hop scene in the DRC”:

Finally, there’s a film about the legendary Papa Wemba (he’s been singing since 1969) talking about his music and politics in the DRC:

Further Reading

On Safari

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The battle over the frame

As Hollywood recycles pro-war propaganda for Gen Z, Youssef Chahine’s ‘Djamila, the Algerian’ reminds us that anti-colonial cinema once turned imperial film language against its makers—and still can.

Fictions of freedom

K. Sello Duiker’s ‘The Quiet Violence of Dreams’ still haunts Cape Town, a city whose beauty masks its brutal exclusions. Two decades later, in the shadow of Amazon’s new development, its truths are more urgent than ever.

When things fall apart

Against a backdrop of global collapse, one exhibition used Chinua Achebe’s classic to hold space for voices from the Global South—and asked who gets to imagine the future.

The General sleeps

As former Nigerian president Muhammadu Buhari’s death is mourned with official reverence, a generation remembers the eight years that drove them out.

The grift tank

In Washington’s think tank ecosystem, Africa is treated as a low-stakes arena where performance substitutes for knowledge. The result: unqualified actors shaping policy on behalf of militarists, lobbyists, and frauds.

Kagame’s hidden war

Rwanda’s military deployments in Mozambique and its shadowy ties to M23 rebels in eastern Congo are not isolated interventions, rather part of a broader geopolitical strategy to expand its regional influence.