Amakula Kampala International Film Festival 2007

Genre : Festival

From thursday 03 to sunday 13 may 2007

Times : 00:00
Principal country concerned : Column : Theater, Cinema/tv

This 10-day free festival will continue to provide an exposition of the many approaches to cinema from around the world while simultaneously offering practical workshops, seminars and lectures by regional and international filmmakers in order to stimulate ideas as well as gather the technical skills to execute them here in East Africa.
The festival will continue its special focus on African cinema which is so rarely seen in Uganda, while making a point of actively seeking out the nascent East-African film industry. By creating regional programmes and by continuing to create a network of individuals and organizations the festival hopes to become a platform to inspire a film culture in Uganda and the region.

Festival Theme
This 4th edition of the festival is guided by the theme of Travels, Transit. As each theme that guides the Amakula festival is connected both to the history of cinema as much as to African realities, so it is with this theme.

Films are part and parcel of a history of travel. The first experiments with air flight coincided roughly with pioneer efforts in the cinema. Genres were suggested on the basis of travels to real or imaginary places (as in westerns or science fiction narratives). Films have principally created our images of foreign places. The elaborate myths and images with which the outside world perceives Africa have derived through films. The work of the filmmaker has always advanced through travel (whether it be of a real or imaginary kind) in two senses: to take/create images from foreign places that contribute to our perspective on these places, and by diffusion of the films themselves that travel to audiences everywhere. The advent of worldwide distribution is crucial to the development of cinema. With the rise of the western world's mass tourism and TV in the 1950s, the intertwined increase in world travel and the circulation of images from the world has spiralled to such an extent we are now well acquainted with our so called global village. This makes it only more urgent for countries that have less visibility in this global game to create images that show the world the view through their own eyes. Digital technology is making it increasingly possible in countries such as Uganda to make films.
While referring to a history of travel in cinema, Travels, Transit speaks to contemporary realities of globalisation and migration with all its experiences of alienation, displacement, borders, uniformity. African films predominantly speak about travel from the country side to the city and the conflicts between traditional and modern life. With many of the African filmmakers living in the Diaspora, their films often deal with a return to their homeland. Thus the most important subject for African filmmakers, both in relation to their colonial histories and current globalisation, is that of identity: of the challenge to find a synthesis between modern and traditional life, between urbanisation and country side. With a world set at an ever faster pace, the contemporary experience of never arriving but always being in transit is sorely invasive. While contemporary film is certainly the symptom of this it behoves the modern film-maker to address this world in transit.
While the film programme deals with this theme in many variations, an ongoing symposium will be addressing the subjects of globalisation and migration. In Crossing Borders many individuals will take the stage to express their experience of travels, transit through text, music, dance.

Locations
Amakula Kampala will continue to surprise Ugandans by offering unusual programmes in unusual sites throughout the city. A special feature of Amakula Kampala is its determination to seek its audiences in their local surroundings, offering a wide range of film screenings over the course of ten days in diverse locations in Kampala.
While the festival during its ten days will be centered in the National Theater (including the green room and all surrounding spaces), selections of films will be shown in Luganda translations in many video halls around town. Special programmes will be designed for children and youth in collaboration with ducational institutions in advance of and during the festival.
The Amakula Mobile Cinema will be seen around town offering impromptu film screenings in outdoor locations, and is planned in a later stage to make a film tour throughout the country.

Programme
The film programme will consist of contemporary film from all over the world as well as a selection of film classics chosen with particular relevance to the festival's theme. On offer will be a broad selection of historic and contemporary African films that provide a good context for understanding African cinema and within that a special focus on East African cinema. Many film directors will be present to introduce their films and engage in discussions.

Competition
The Golden Impala Eastern Africa Short Film Award will be given each year to the winner of the competition for short film and video productions from Eastern Africa. The festival will invite submissions before March 15, 2007 from Uganda, Tanzania, Kenya, Rwanda, Burundi, Zambia, Malawi, Mozambique, Congo, Sudan, Ethiopia, Somalia, Djibouti, and Eritrea, that will be reviewed by an international jury during the festival.

Workshops, Seminars and Lectures
Amakula Kampala places great importance on creating a platform of exchange by providing workshops, seminars and lectures on practical and theoretical aspects of film production and discussions focusing on important issues of the day. These programmes will be hosted by local, regional and international directors and producers with whom audiences will have the opportunity to meet. Workshops will be organized in advance as well as during the festival. A regular festival event is the Annual Congress on East-African Cinema and a symposium around the theme of the festival, while each year three filmmakers are invited to give master classes on their work.

Multi-disciplinary Events
We have established the goal to inspire experiment and collaborations between different artistic disciplines and the moving image to enhance an active critical/cultural field driven by strong independent ideas. Highlighted festival programmes will include musicians providing accompaniment for several silent film classics or collaborating with video makers; dancers and choreographers to work with multi-media visual approaches, and visual artists to create unique multi-media work or design collaboratively within other media. The festival will be accompanied by an arts exhibition as suggested by the festival's theme.

We welcome you all to celebrate the Fourth edition of the Amakula Kampala International Film Festival with us at the opening on May 3.
Don't miss it!



Partners

  • Arterial network
  • Media, Sports and Entertainment Group (MSE)
  • Gens de la Caraïbe
  • Groupe 30 Afrique
  • Alliance Française VANUATU
  • PACIFIC ARTS ALLIANCE
  • FURTHER ARTS
  • Zimbabwe : Culture Fund Of Zimbabwe Trust
  • RDC : Groupe TACCEMS
  • Rwanda : Positive Production
  • Togo : Kadam Kadam
  • Niger : ONG Culture Art Humanité
  • Collectif 2004 Images
  • Africultures Burkina-Faso
  • Bénincultures / Editions Plurielles
  • Africiné
  • Afrilivres

With the support of