The festival, held between May 27 and June 5, has had its first presentation event at the
CICUS in Seville
Seville, April 5, 2022. A woman in red, walking on a trampoline, suspended in cosmic space and enveloped in a spiritual air. The image of the poster that announces and illustrates the 19th edition of the African Film Festival-FCAT, to be held between May 27 and June 5 in Tarifa / Tangier and several extensions of Cadiz and Ceuta – appeals to the identity and balance between cultures.
Luis Méndez, director of the CICUS, acting as host, the director of the Festival, Mane Cisneros, and the mayor of Tarifa, Francisco Ruiz Giráldez, have been in charge of unveiling the poster of the 2022 edition during an evening at the Center for Cultural Initiatives of the University of Seville (CICUS) in which there was no lack of music and drinks from the African continent.
Maïmouna Guerresi
The multimedia artist, who straddles Italy and Senegal, Maïmouna Guerresi, is the mother of a body of work infused with Sufi spirituality. Guerresi thanked the festival through a video for choosing this image, Red Trampoline. The work, belonging to her series Aïsha in Wonderland, brings feminine energy very present in this powerful image that alludes “to cultural and spiritual crossbreeding” and that possesses the influence of Guerresi’s two cultures, “the Western and the African, that mixed-race identity,” in the artist’s words. “This image becomes a possible metaphor of a suspension between the two cultures and at the same time of a balance between the two.”
For FCAT’s director, Mane Cisneros, this edition means “a serene step towards that normality we so much desire”, after two years of the festival marked by the pandemic. “We multiplied the attendance in the film sessions and parallel activities, as well as the training and industry space,” she explains. Likewise, Cisneros applauds that Ceuta, through the University of Granada, and the University of Cadiz, “are finally joining the FCAT this year, which hopes to once again become a privileged space where south and north dialogue through cinema”. In the opinion of the festival’s director, “the image of Maimouna Guerresi perfectly stages that serene spirit of dialogue with which we face this new edition“.
Guillermo Pérez Villata
The director and the mayor of Tarifa have announced during this presentation of the 19th FCAT that the artist from Tarifa, Guillermo Pérez Villata will design the award of the festival’s prizes for this edition. The renowned and international plastic artist, an icon of the 80s, is closely linked to the festival in the city where he was born and where he lives, with which he identifies. “Here I’ve seen films that impressed me,” said an artist who also stands out for his love of Africa and the traces of the continent that pulsate in his paintings and sculptures.
The Third Root: Dominican Republic
The African Film Festival-FCAT will not only focus on the cinema of the neighboring continent but, as it happens in each edition, will look at the African descent in the world, with a particular interest in Latin America. African diasporas around the world are a valuable source of the common heritage of humanity, so the parallel section The Third Root will offer in Tarifa films that follow the traces of the diaspora in American countries. In an approach that allows linking, from a cinematographic perspective the visibility and invisibility of black people, in a continent where the Afrodescendant population reaches 200 million people out of a total of 625 million Latin Americans.
In the 19th edition of the festival, the cinematography of the Dominican Republic will be in focus, where the cultural legacy of Africa is present in all areas of the life of its people. So much so that the country’s Vice Minister of Multilateral Foreign Policy, Rubén Silié, affirms that in the Dominican Republic “we are all Afro-descendants, even the whites, and we have to vindicate it”.
Spanish cinema that looks at Africa and Andalusian jury
Among this year’s program, the festival will once again focus on reflecting on the gaze at Africa. A gaze that Spanish cinema is beginning to turn to in a more serious and committed way. In recent cinema produced within our borders, films that look at Africa have increased and some of them have even had multiple nominations for the Goya and other awards, so the FCAT returns to project Spanish -and Andalusian- cinema that looks both to the neighboring continent and interculturality. A handful of titles, between short and feature films, screened in Tarifa, will give the keys to the new relationship between Spain and Africa through cinema, as well as the image that is disseminated in these new productions.
Likewise, during the event held at the CICUS in Seville, the Andalusian jury that this year will award the prizes of En breve, the short film competition section, has been presented. The jury is formed by Inés Nofuentes, executive producer with films premiered internationally at festivals such as the Berlinale, San Sebastián, Locarno, Toronto, Cartagena or Guadalajara; Nocem Collado, photographer, filmmaker and director of documentaries; and Andrés Vega, director of the Andalesgai Festival, the Andalusian LGTBI film festival.
Extension in Ceuta
Another novelty of the 19th edition of FCAT will be its extension at the University Campus of Ceuta thanks to an agreement with the University of Granada and the Coexistence Award Foundation of the City Council of Ceuta. An extension that could not be launched as planned last year because of health measures. There will be screenings of films, shorts, and feature films from this year’s program, as well as face-to-face meetings with directors.
FCAT LAB
Likewise, this year’s edition will once again feature the FCAT LAB post-production workshop, which will schedule one-on-one meetings and a project market, awarding a total of €20,000 in in-kind prizes and services for the development of mostly African film productions.
These projects can be registered in this initiative until April 22nd. Its objective is to increase the visibility and opportunities for films in post-production, presenting them to sales agents, distributors, VOD platforms, and buyers in general who come physically or virtually to FCAT.
The second edition of FCAT LAB, to be held on June 2 and 3, 2022, continues its commitment to the online format, thanks to the support of the Spanish Agency for International Development Cooperation (AECID), the Goethe Institut Madrid and the collaboration of various Spanish and international companies. With this initiative, FCAT continues to provide tangible support to feature film projects from Africa.
For its part, the Instituto de la Cinematografía y de las Artes Audiovisuales (ICAA) will organize on June 2 in Tarifa a showcase in which five Spanish companies, representatives of post-production services, will present themselves to African producers and directors both in person and via streaming. In addition, on the same day, the guide Who is Who – Shooting in Spain will also be discussed, in which the foreign audiovisual professional has complete information about the industry in Spain and its business and professional fabric.
This is a work promoted by ICEX-Invest in Spain, with the collaboration of the sector through the Association of Spanish International Audiovisual Production Companies (PROFILM), the Audiovisual Industry Alliance (ALIA), the Association of Spanish Advertising Production Companies (APCP), and the Spain Film Commission.
The African Film Festival – FCAT is part of PANTALLA, the State Federation of Coordinators of Film and Audiovisual Content Festivals, which brings together 170 festivals from 8 coordinators and 14 autonomous communities with a total of one million spectators, committed to quality, diversity, and plurality.
2 Responses
It is amazing that majority of
the filmmakers in Africa don’t know about FCAT.
Have you done any special focus on Nollywood, the phenomenal guerilla film industry of Nigeria?
A special day for NOLLYWOOD will attract the attention of Africa and the rest of the world to FCAT
Hello Ekenyerengoz Michael,
In the 7th edition of FCAT we did a retrospective on Nollywood!
Thank you so much for your proposal!