Seeing Africa Through African Eyes: the New York African Film Festival encourages cultural dialogue.

• Author: Rutsch, Horst

For over a decade, the New York African Film Festival, Inc. has been introducing African cinema to ever-growing appreciative audiences in the United States. Over a two-week period in April, the Festival features films by African filmmakers and documentaries on cultural and human rights issues with an African context. The African Film Festival, Inc., a non-profit arts organization headed by founder-Director Mahen Bonetti (see interview on next page), promotes understanding of the diversity of African cultures and contributes to giving African filmmakers around the world a recognized presence in New York.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Since its first celebration in 1993, the African Film Festival (AFF) has explored a range of subjects, from transformations of rural/urban identity to African women to retrospectives of established African filmmakers. The 2004 Festival opened with two films about the struggle against corruption: "Critical Assignment" (2003), one of Africa's first big-budget pictures; and "Agogo Eewo/Taboo Gong" (2002), the award-winning film by Tunde Kelani.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

The tension between rural tradition and urban appreciation is the hallmark of African cinema. Filmmakers draw from folklore, myth, fantasy and magic to communicate a distinctly African sensibility that blends aesthetic experimentation, humour and biting social critique. The AFF seeks to nurture appreciation of African cinema through affordable screenings in public and educational settings. During the...