Round table: "It is at the end of the old rope that the new rope is woven"
20 years of FCAT from 20 films: images and views in dialogue between the past, present and future projections of African cinemas
- SUNDAY 30th APRIL
- 10:15 - 11:45 (CET)
- Language: ENGLISH + Simultaneous translation to SPANISH
- Iglesia de Santa María (TARIFA)
Programming a retrospective cycle in dialogue with the present as part of the celebration of our 20th anniversary as a festival is a perfect (pre)text to reflect on the link between African cinematic memory and the new generations of contemporary filmmakers.
But celebrating the masterpieces and those essential talents of the neighbouring continent in the voice of experts and present-day filmmakers is at the same time an invitation to think about the new creative routes of the future. Because ultimately it is also about something else, as the West African proverbs preach: “It is at the end of the old rope that the new rope is woven“ and “He who does what his father did not do, will see what his father did not see”.
SPEAKERS
Pedro Pimenta
Hawa Essuman
Ery Claver
Alain KasSanda
Modera: Pablo de María
Pedro Pimenta began his film career at the National Film Institute of Mozambique in 1977. Since then, he has produced, co-produced or directed numerous short films, documentaries and feature films in his native country and in other African countries. Between 1997 and 2003 Pedro was the chief technical advisor to UNESCO for the Zimbabwe film training Project in Harare. There, as part of his duties, he conceived and managed several training programmes.
He is one of the founders of AVEA (Audio Visual Entrepreneurs of Africa), an annual vocational training programme for producers in Southern Africa. Until December 2005 Pedro was a member of the Awards Committee of the Prince Claus Fund of the Netherlands. He is the founder and director of DOCKANEMA, a documentary film festival in Mozambique. Similarly, he was director of the Durban Film Festival in 2015 and the Joburg Film Festival in 2016 and 2017. In 2018, he has been invited to become a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences – AMPAS.
Pedro was one of the main consultants for the UNESCO 2021 Report “The African Film Industry: Trends, Challenges and Opportunities for Growth”
Hawa Essuman is a filmmaker, screenwriter, director and film producer. After directing plays and television, she was drawn to film directing as a means to fully express her vision as a storyteller and filmmaker.
Hawa has been successfully directing films for over a decade. Among these, she co-directed the documentary Silas, which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival and won awards at the River Run and Zanzibar festivals. Previously, she directed the multi-award winning film Soul Boy, which screened at over 40 film festivals around the world.
She has made other work, including a short film for Olafor Eliasson’s Little Sun Project exhibition at Tate Modern, and various art, commercial and international development films.
Her deep interest in film and the development of the film community is reflected in her participation in juries and selection committees, such as those of the Warsaw Film Festival, the FESPACO African Film Awards and the Kigali International Film Festival. She is also co-founder of Manyatta Screenings, an open-air screening programme of East African short films that aims to raise awareness of short films, create a meeting point for filmmakers and inspire discussion among audiences.
The programme also supports the next generation of young African filmmakers, assisting them with mentoring, master classes, workshops and film roundtables across the African continent.
Ery Claver is one of Angola’s most versatile filmmakers. He began his career as a cameraman, working on numerous television reports and documentaries. In 2013 he joined “Geração 80”, where he perfected his style as a cinematographer, culminating in his participation in the internationally acclaimed film “Ar Condicionado”, directed by Fradique, in which he also collaborated in the development of the script.
His filmography has guaranteed his presence at important international festivals such as the Rotterdam International Film Festival, the Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival in France, the Tarifa-Tangier African Film Festival, the BFI London Film Festival, etc.
As a director, he has signed several short films and in 2022 he premiered his first feature film, “Nossa senhora da loja do chinês”, at the 75th Locarno Film Festival.
Born in Kinshasa, Alain Kassanda left the DRC for France at the age of 11. After studying communication, since 2003 he has organized screening cycles and several film festivals in various Parisian theaters. He has also been a film programmer for the Les 39 marches de Sevran cinema-theater near Paris for five years. Alain Kassanda moved to Ibadan, in the southwest of Nigeria, in 2015. TROUBLE SLEEP (2020) is the starting point of a triptych dedicated to Ibadan. His work COLETTE AND JUSTIN (2022) premiered at the IDFA and won the Gilda Vieira De Mello Award at the FIFDH. His latest work COCONUT HEAD GENERATION (2023) was selected at Cinéma du réel and at New Directors / New Films at Lincoln Center.
Pablo de María Díaz is a freelance programmer and director of the Semana del Audiovisual Contemporáneo de Oviedo (SACO).
He coordinates the Dialogues between Cinema and Painting cycle organised by the Museum of Fine Arts of Asturias. He is a programmer of activities for La Noche Blanca in Oviedo, and is part of the cultural programming team of the Princess of Asturias Foundation. He also carries out different film programmes for various town councils in Asturias.
He is a regular contributor to the programme Tres en la carretera on Radio3. He has been a member of the jury for the EURIMAGES award at the Seville European Film Festival, the Vila do Conde International Short Film Festival, the New Directors Award at the Gijón International Film Festival and the LBGTIQ Festival at the Niemeyer Centre.
He has collaborated in several festivals and currently collaborates with the Seville European Film Festival SEFF, the Tarifa African Film Festival (FCAT) and the Puertas film fest.
Round table: "Preserving Memory: The Importance of keeping Africa's Film Heritage Alive"
A space for conversation about dissemination, accessibility, and how to keep the continent's film heritage alive for the future
- MONDAY 1st MAY
- 10:15 - 11:45 (CET)
- Language: FRENCH + Simultaneous translation to SPANISH
- Iglesia de Santa María (TARIFA)
The accessibility of heritage and its dissemination are concepts that revolve around an elementary idea: people as subjects of action. Following this premise, we engage in a conversation that seeks to shed light on the opportunities and difficulties that African film heritage faces today to be recovered and made available to the public. Emphasizing issues such as the need for resources, the debt of reparation and strategies aimed at valuing its cinemas as an asset of cultural interest for communities, we ask how to keep ”alive and healthy” the filmic memory of the neighbouring continent.
SPEAKERS
Farah Clémentine Dramani-Issifou
Ali Essafi
Léa Baron
Thierno Souleymane Diallo
Modera: Federico Olivieri
French and Beninese, Farah Clémentine Dramani-Issifou is an exhibition curator, film programmer and independent researcher. She lives and works between Paris and Dakar.
In 2011, she initiated the New African Documentary Film Festival between Paris and Cotonou (2011-2017). In 2018-2019, she has been a visiting researcher at the École supérieure des arts de Clermont Métropole, and also participates in the École Doctorale des Ateliers de la pensée initiated by Felwine Sarr and Achille Mbembe in Dakar.
In 2018, she joined the feature film selection committee of the Semaine de la Critique (2018-2021) in the parallel section of the Festival de Cannes, before becoming artistic coordinator of the section dedicated to short films (2021-2022).
Since 2020, he has been part of the team at the Yennenga Centre in Dakar, created by the Franco-Senegalese filmmaker Alain Gomis.
In 2022/2023, she joined the selection committees of the Marrakech International Film Festival, the Villa Médicis Festival and FESPACO. In 2023, she will be guest curator at the Doxa Film Festival in Vancouver.
She is also co-curator of the exhibition “Un.e Air.e de Famille, focusing on the women of the Africa2020 Season, chapter 2 of which will be presented at the Musée Théodore Monod d’art africain in Dakar in January 2024. In January 2022, she co-curated “Tofodji, sur les pas des ancêtres”, an exhibition-meeting on the restitution of 26 objects returned to Benin by France.
As a researcher, her work focuses on decolonial curatorial practices in the visual arts and film. As such, she is regularly invited to international conferences and publishes in books and scientific journals.
In 2023, she was named Knight of Merit for Arts, Letters and Communication of Burkina Faso.
Born and raised in Morocco, Ali Essafi studied psychology in France and then entered the world of cinema. His work as a director includes “Général, nous voilà!”, “The Silence of the Beet Fields”, “Ouarzazate Movie” and “Shikhat’s Blues”, which have been widely screened on the international circuit. Back in Morocco, he embarked on a long research into North African film and visual archives. These archives have been transformed into films and installations. His film “Crossing the Seventh Gate” premiered at the Berlinale (Forum) in 2017 and his latest work “Before the Dying of the Light” premiered to great acclaim at IDFA (Amsterdam) in November 2020.
Léa Baron joined the Cinémathèque Afrique of the Institut français in 2019 to follow the film projects of the Africa2020 Season, coordinate the restoration of films and work on their promotion around the world in relation to the ownership of their rights.
She holds a Master’s degree in International Cooperation in Africa and the Middle East from the Institut des Mondes Africains of the Sorbonne Paris 1. In addition, she worked between 2017 and 2018 at the Alliance Française de Kaolack in Senegal, where she was in charge of film programming.
The filmmaker was born in Guinea and studied at the Institut Supérieur des Arts de Guinée (ISAG) in Dubréka. In 2012, he moved to Niger to study documentary filmmaking and then graduated in documentary filmmaking in Senegal.
In 2012, he moved to Niamey (Niger) to enrol in a master’s degree in Creative Documentary. He validated his master’s degree with a 13mn film “Je viens de la Guinée”. Back in Guinea, he directed the 13mn film “Matricule 60076”.
In 2013 he completed his second Master in Creative Documentary in Saint-Louis, Senegal. His graduation film will be “Journey to Hope”. In 2015 he directed his first medium-length film “Un homme pour ma famille”, and in 2018 the so-called “Nô Mëtî Sîfâdhe>” (hard to count).
Au Cimetière de la pellicule is his first feature-length documentary.
Federico Olivieri is a cultural manager and researcher whose work is framed in the intersections between film festivals, African cinemas and culture as spaces for education and change. He has been part of the organising team of the Tarifa African Film Festival (FCAT) since its foundation in 2004 and is currently responsible for the Tree of Words, FCAT’s annual forum for professional meetings and exchanges.
In 2007 she completed a degree in Journalism at the University of Seville (Spain) and in 2009 she obtained a Master’s degree in Global Media and Post-National Communication from SOAS (University of London). After working for the Spanish Agency for International Development Cooperation (AECID) in Kenya and on different cultural projects in Spain, Senegal, South Africa, Equatorial Guinea and the United States, in 2016 she completed her PhD in the interdisciplinary programme in “Political Thought and Analysis, Democracy and Citizenship” at the Pablo de Olavide University in Seville (Spain).
His thesis explored the history of sub-Saharan African cinema and the meaning of interculturality in African film festivals. He is co-founder of the Slum Film Festival (Kenya) and is currently executive director of the European Film Festival of Puerto Rico.
Webinar: "Protecting the cinematic footsteps of Africa"
New initiatives for the preservation, restoration and protection of the continent's audiovisual heritage.
- TUESDAY 2nd MAY
- 10:15 - 11:45 (CET)
- Language: ENGLISH + Simultaneous translation to SPANISH
- VIRTUAL assistance (with prior registration)
Certainly, the desire for universal accessibility of African filmic memory is not whimsical; its importance as a means of preserving the oral record and the invaluable diversity of narratives of African culture invites us to discuss the efforts needed to safeguard and create suitable conditions for its full use and enjoyment.
We spoke with professionals from film libraries and specialised archives with the conviction that these institutions have a key role to play, not only as entities dedicated to film rescue, restoration and conservation, but also as agents for the promotion of cultural rights, capable of making effective the patrimonial responsibility with the debt of reparation resulting from colonial dispossession, and of defending the historical, aesthetic and documentary relevance of African cinemas.
SPEAKERS
masego mmutle
Cecilia Cenciarelli
Stefanie Schulte Strathaus
Esteve Riambau Möller
Modera: Bastián Castillo
Masego Mmutle holds a Diploma in Linguistic Practice and a Bachelor’s degree in Archives and Records Management. She also is Master Candidate in Information Science from the University of South Africa. She has 10 years of experience in the audiovisual archiving sector. She is currently working as Assistant Director of Film and Video Preservation at The National Film, Video and Sound Archives of South Africa in the Department of Sport, Arts and Culture.
Cecilia Cenciarelli is head of the Research and Special Projects department at the Cineteca di Bologna (Italy), where she has worked as an archivist since 2000. She has overseen the digitisation and cataloguing of the Charlie Chaplin archive, as well as its dissemination through exhibitions, research, publications and programming. She is currently working on the archives of Bernardo Bertolucci.
Since its creation in 2007, it has been part of the World Cinema Project, a special programme of the Film Foundation to preserve and disseminate endangered film heritage. It has contributed to the restoration, preservation and exhibition of 52 films from Africa, Asia, Eastern Europe, Central and South America.
Cecilia is one of the four artistic directors of Il Cinema Ritrovato, a film festival dedicated to film history, film heritage. She has been a member of the FIAF executive committee since 2016.
Stefanie Schulte Strathaus is the artistic director of Arsenal, Berlin Institute for Film and Video Art, where she has worked as programme director since the early 1990s. Between 2001 and 2019 she was a member of the selection committee of the Berlinale Forum. Together with Anselm Franke, she launched the Berlinale’s Forum Expanded section in 2006, which she directed until 2020.
She co-curated LIVE FILM! JACK SMITH! Five Flaming Days in A Rented World (2009, with Susanne Sachsse and Marc Siegel) and “A Paradise Built in Hell” at Kunstverein Hamburg (2014, with Bettina Steinbrügge), an exhibition on the contemporary use of the 16mm format. Between 2010 and 2013 he conceived and curated the project “Living Archive – Archive Work as a Contemporary Artistic and Curatorial Practice”.
In 2018, she curated a film programme and exhibition as part of Tashweesh, a festival on gender in North Africa, Europe and the Middle East, organised by the Goethe Institut.
From 2017 to 2022 he curated the collaborative project “Archive außer sich” as part of HKW’s “The New Alphabet” project, which led to the biennial archival festival “Archival Assembly”.
Her work deals with the intersections between film restoration, exhibition and distribution, focusing on decolonial thought and practice.
Schulte Strathaus is also a member of the board of the Harun Farocki Institut and of the Master of Film Culture at the University of Jos (Nigeria).
She is editor of: Kinemathekheft Nr. 93: “Germaine Dulac” (with Sabine Nessel and Heide Schlüpmann, 2002); “The Memo Book. Films, Videos and Installations by Matthias Müller” (2005); “The Primal Scene: Christine Noll Brinckmann. Films and Texts” (2008); “Who says concrete doesn’t burn, have you tried? West Berlin Film in the ’80s” (with Florian Wüst, 2008); “Living Archive – Archive Work as a Contemporary Artistic and Curatorial Practice” (2013) “Accidental Archivism. Shaping Cinema’s Futures with Remnants of the Past” (with Vinzenz Hediger, 2023).
Professor of Audiovisual Communication at the Autonomous University of Barcelona, he has been the director of the Filmoteca de Catalunya since 2010 and has been a member of the Executive Committee of the FIAF. He co-directed the feature films La doble vida del faquir (2005) and Màscares (2009) and the television series La gran il-lusió. Retrat intermitent del cinema català (2019).
Author of forty volumes on Film History, he has devoted particular attention to the figure of Orson Welles, as the author of four books on his work, co-writer of the documentary Orson Welles in the Land of Don Quixote (2000) and director of the play Yours truly, Orson Welles (2008). He has been awarded the Comillas Prize and the Ricardo Muñoz Suay Prize twice by the Spanish Film Academy, and has been decorated by the French State as Officier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres.
Bastián Castillo is a professional who works in cultural management guided by his deep interest in the arts and visual anthropology. He is part of the organizing team of the African Film Festival of Tarifa (FCAT) since 2022 and is currently coordinator of the Tree of Words, the annual forum for meeting and professional exchange of FCAT.
In 2015 he completed his studies in Public Administration and Political Science at the University of Chile and he is a Master Candidate in Anthropology: Management of Cultural Diversity, Heritage and Development of the University of Seville at the University of Seville (Spain).