AFRIKAMERA, an annual festival of African film (now in its sixth year), took place last month in Berlin. Founded in 2007 by the cultural association toucouleur e.V., AFRIKAMERA tries to counter the lack of awareness towards contemporary African films in Germany.

November 2013 marked the beginning of a new programme called "RE_IMAGING AFRICA" which aims at promoting exchanges between film schools and film festivals in Germany and African countries and at strengthening the collaboration and cooperation between these film institutions. As a starting point, this year's festival was co-curated by AFRIKAMERA together with the FESPACO festival in Burkina Faso, the Journées Cinématographiques de Carthage (JCC) in Tunisia, Rencontres du Film Court (RFCI) in Madagascar and the Comoros International Film Festival (CIFF). An interesting festival programme of film screenings was combined with a day-long symposium under the title "The Art of Collaboration" which explored new ways and structures of partnership and cooperation between filmmakers in Germany and on the African continent.



The multi-faceted and impressive selection of contemporary film production from Africa started with Virgin Margarida by Licinio Azevedo from Mozambique, telling a story of idealistic concepts turning to outright oppression set in the revolutionary times of Mozambique's independence, and concluded on a highly political note with Le Président by renowned and daring Cameroonian director Jean Pierre Bekolo, which has been banned in Bekolo's own country as it - in a mixture of fiction and reality - critically comments on the political ossification in Cameroon as a consequence of the almost 40-year dictatorial rule of its president Paul Biya.


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