Pan African Film Festival

The Pan African Film Festival seems a little known wonder, a moment of geni

us snuck away an unexpected spot in Los Angeles.  The festival takes place in the Magic Johnson theatres in Crenshaw and the attached mall.  Not only is there an incredible film festival featuring literally hundreds of shorts and feature films, but in the mall is a splendid array of African art.  From the moment you walk into the festival, it becomes clear this is no Hollywood affair.  Although the names of stars like Danny Glover and Forest Whitaker abound, the atmosphere is pleasant even to the lowly student walking in.  Instead of red carpet there are friendly people at the ticket counters and lots and lots of volunteers helping with a project they genuinely believe in.  

The first program I went to was a series of short films.   The first was an accident (the wrong film in the wrong projector) but worthy of mention just the same.  It was an exceptionally well put together documentary of  the evolution of hip hop by ex-football star Byron Hurt.  Hip Hop: Beyond Beats and Rhymes is remarkable and although we were cut off from full viewing when the mistake was realized I would still highly recommend the film.

The two intended films of the program were Incident in the Life of a Slave Girl and Victims of Our Riches.  The first is a period piece, a drama set in the midst of slavery.  The plot mainly concerns a young woman, who questions the irony of being "inherited" by a five year old girl.  The young actress plays a convincing part, although the dialogue and direction don't give her any help along the way.  The director seemed more involved in the visual aspects of the film, i.e. the constant use of water and bright colors to signify the spirit of the young girl, than in directing the actors.   However, the title card in the beginning of the short tells the audience that the film is "based on a true story" (actually an adaption of Harriet Tubman's

 autobiography), which makes the delivery of the lines less important than the story line.  In reality, the story line is where this film exceeds expectations.  Without giving away the drama of the film, the young girl becomes pregnant and must make a choice concerning the evil caretaker of her "owner."  Eventually it even takes on a feminist vibe, with the other woman slave protecting the protagonist.  In the end our hero chooses her form of freedom and finds happiness.  The film is uplifting even amidst the dark theme and awful script.  I'd give it three stars.

The second film, Victims of Our Riches, is a sad, sad, sad documentary.  It covers m

any aspects of African life like agriculture and economic worries while pointedly (and subtly) remarking that Africa is richer than any country her inhabitants might be working for.  Warning: this film will make you cry.  It opens with footage from the World Social Forum in 2006, where a man addressing a large crowd affirms, "Historical Truth is the Key to Freedom."  The director (Kai Toure) creatively intersperses these quotes at key points in the film.  He uses reoccurring security images of illegal immigrants trying to cross into Morocco, followed by their subsequent beating, to segue into black and white interviews with those who have crossed the border and been sent back.  There are six of these heart-wrenching interviews, ending with a young woman culminating her interview by saying she has learned to say, "No,

 that's not right."  The film brings to light little known facts about the African economy, like that the countries together owed the World Bank a debt of $545 billion, for which, with interest, they have paid $3485 billion.  "No, that's not right" is an apt description.  But the film also addresses the frustration of these people.  Another interviewee says, "We have only eyes for the north" and so although his country of Mali produces enough cotton to clothe all it

s people they continue to buy clothes from, "the north."  Indeed, it is noticably odd that in the moments where the camera sweeps a vast landscape and comes to rest on a person, that poor impoverished farmer is wearing a shirt proclaiming, "Reebok."  The constant movement of the handheld camera echoes the stories of these immigrants, who explain their journey from Mali to Niger to Algeria to Morocco, or something of the like.  The film then details the life these people are subjected to once they come under European law, if indeed they make it at all.  The hour long film comes to an end with the reading of a poem that was begun towards the start of the short.  With the poem as a voice-over, bright images of women and children playing and learning in cluttered streets slowly gives way to a night-vision sequence with a camera man following a band of illegal immigrants as they try to cross the border.  The ensuing violence, together with the calm man's voice speaking a poem of peace, makes the end of the film a tear jerker and a half.   Five stars. 

The second program I visited consisted of a single feature film simply titled Drum.  This film is anything but simple.  It details the little known story of Henry Nxumalo (played by Taye Diggs), a South African journalist who becomes instrumental in the downfall of apartheid.

This drama is especially poignant because it is based on a true story.  The film opens in Sophiatown (pronounced Sof-eye-a-town in Digg's wonderful adopted accent) and is

 immediately recognizable for it's rich costuming and smokey lens shots.  The first scene is Henry and his other friends from Drum, the Sophiatown newspaper, sitting in a dingy bar getting drunk.  One of Henry's friends, a forward thinker who will later be violently reprimanded for his heartfelt and devastatingly illegal love affair with a white woman, speaks the first lines, "Live fast, die young, and leave a good-looking corpse."  The script (by screenwriter Jason Filardi) is full of little pieces of gold like that line that both speak to the mood of the time and foreshadow the movie itself.  Later in the movie come another gold piece, when Henry says of the violence in the streets, "I don't see anything heroic about young black men killing each other... almost like they were fighting to be someone."  

The nuts and bolts of the movie are perfectly put together.  The casting is superb. Henry's wife, Florence, is a strong female role, a difficult part played brilliantly by 

a young woman who's name is unfortunately not part of the program.  There is noticably little makeup on the women, making them more natural and simultaneously stronger (somehow less feminine).   The soundtrack, driven by hypnotic drum beats, is as essential to the movie as the dialogue.  The use of a "dirty lens," film speak for a fragment of something in the close foreground blocking a part of the intended focus, together with the dramatic use of smoke, visually shows the confusion of the time.  The only problem with this movie is the consistent use of modern phrases like, "kicked my ass" which would not have been prevalent in the 1950s.  Other than that, this film documents a sadly unknown story in an entertaining  and moving way.  Also a tear jerker at the end.  5 stars for this film as well.