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Director: Mahmoud Zemmouri
From: France
and Algeria
Year: 1997
Minutes: 85
Language: French with English
subtitles
Genre: comedy
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| In a housing project located on
the outskirts of Paris renamed “100% Arabica” by
its inhabitants, African immigrants live side by side. The
residents are united by their struggle for recognition in
a society where immigrants are often regarded as second class
citizens. In a world of exiles, poverty is the common denominator.
Against this backdrop, director Zemmouri has brought together
two of the biggest and most charismatic stars of the cross-cultural
musical form known as Rai, Cheb Mami and Khaled, who play
the leaders of a band called Rap Oriental. As the band of
musicians starts to gain in popularity, the Imam of the local
mosque (Mouss) tries to destroy them by stirring up racial
and cultural tensions. However, no one can stop the infectious
popularity of the songs in this story of music triumphing
over bigotry and violence. |
35mm rental: $300
video rental: $90
video sale: $195
DVD sale: $245
DVD also includes Bonus Short Rotating Square
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Director: Pol Cruchten
From: Cape Verde
and Luxembourg
Year: 1995
Minutes: 80
Language: Portuguese & French
with English subtitles
Genre: drama
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From the sea and sun of the Cape
Verde Island, it's a very big step to rainy, gloomy, land-locked
Luxembourg, but that's the journey 20-year-old Dju Dele Dibonga
must take to track down his dad, whose yearly visits and monthly
guest worker checks have stopped. But it's not just the weather
that's not welcoming, Dju also has to face overzealous immigration
cops intent on filling deportation quotas and the noisy outrage
of a hard-boozing police lieutenant (veteran actor Philippe
Léotard). Dad's trail looks cold, until lieutenant decides
to join in the hunt and to become Dju's partner in this tale
of love and friendship. With the exceptional participation
of Cape Verdian singer Cesaria Evora as Dju's mother and Manu
Dibango as himself.
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35mm rental: $300
video rental: $90
video sale: $195
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Director: Francis Dujardin
From: Belgium
Year: 1999 Minutes: 54
Language: French with English
subtitles
Genre: documentary
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The extraordinary and tragic saga
of 267 Congolese, brought to Brussels for the 1897 World's
Fair. After some four months of travel towards Belgium, they
are exhibited before a million visitors. Subjected to the
crushing gaze of the "Whites" and the cold climate, many fell
prey to disease and even some lost their lives. The dead were
hastily dispatched in a common grave, sparking a fierce debate
in Belgian society. The project was overblown, but necessary
in the eyes of the first colonizers, who presumed to have
tamed the far-flung savages. One hundred years later, Congolese
compatriots return to the scene of these events and question
the "Whites" of today on the incredible story of that "human
zoo". They carry out the ritual of "a return to the earth"
by way of reparation for too great a hurt… A film that revisits
a century of stereotyped conceptions about the Africans. And
running through it, the almost aching question: "How is today
different?"
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video rental: $90
video sale: $195
DVD rental: $140
DVD sale: $295
DVD also includes powerful documentary Congo: White King, Red Rubber, Black Death |
Director: Menelik Shabazz
From: UK
Year:
1981
Minutes: 107
Language: English
Genre:
drama
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| The illusions being burnt are those
of Pat Williams (Cassie McFarlane), an attractive 22-year
old Black girl with a steady clerical job, her own little
flat in West London, and the aim of settling down to a comfortable
lower-middle class married life with Mr. Right. She is shaken
out of this dream by Del, a feckless, disgruntled macho type
(played with sullen charm by one of UK’s best Black actors,
Victor Romero), who moves in with her uninvited. He expects
sex and food on demand and comes to regard the right side
of the bed as his private preserve. The film explores first
the growing tensions of the affair and then the girl's gradual
realization that her aspirations are simply those that a white
world has imposed upon her. Drawn into the world of 'Africa'
(and the realization of her own cultural background) and also
one in which women are not mere chattels, looking for more
chattels, she begins to see society more sharply.
"Burning an Illusion powerfully evokes young Black
lifestyles in the London eighties. It wants to show what
it's like to live in Britain now." - City Limits |
video rental: $90
video sale: $195
DVD sale: $295
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The Glass
Ceiling
Director: Yamina Benguigui
From: France
Year: 2004
Minutes: 90
Language: French with English
subtitles
Genre: Documentary
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Europe's racial make-up is quickly changing. French-Algerian
filmmaker Yamina Benguigui is hoping to start a conversation
about affirmative action - a policy that does not exist
in France today. Benguigui's Le Plafond de Verre
(Glass Ceiling) presents a serie of sometimes
very emotional first-hand accounts of discrimination againt
mostly black and North African Arab who are trying to find
jobs. The documentary offers poingnant and reveiling accounts
of discrimination faced by these full-fledged French citizens
who are also children of immigrant parents.
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video rental: $90
video sale: $295
DVD sale: $295
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Director: Dominique Loreau
From: Belgium
Year: 1994
Minutes: 76
Language: French with English
subtitles
Genre: docu-drama
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| In this film, whose title is a Senegalese
proverb, a griot (story teller) traveling from Dakar to Brussels
weaves a tale about African expatriates and offers a candid
look at the life of African immigrants in Belgium. With Sotigui
Kouyate - a real life griot - as the story teller. |
16mm rental: $290
video rental: $90
video sale: $195
DVD sale: $295
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Director: Abdelkrim Bahloul
From: France
and Algeria
Year: 1997
Minutes: 96
Language: French with English
subtitles
Genre: thriller
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Sixty five years old Abdelkader
Silimani, an Algerian Muslin living in France, after inadvertently
witnessing a murder, closely escapes from the murderers by
hiding out into a mosque. The black leather dressed masked
murderers, with their firearms in hand, do not hesitate to
enter the mosque full of praying men looking for the eyewitness.
They leave empty handed but determined not to give up their
search.
Detective Leclerc is assigned to the case. As he searches
for the eyewitness who stays mute with fear, the detective
slowly discovers the Northern Paris Muslim community and its
traditions. For the first time, the French detective is exposed
to the contradictions and challenges minority communities
face as they struggle to live in a new culture with a different
set of values and religious beliefs.
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35mm rental: $300
video rental: $90
video sale: $195
DVD sale: $295
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Director: Frieder Schlaich
From: Germany
Year: 1999
Minutes: 84
Language: German with English
subtitles
Genre: drama
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A powerful film portraying institutionalized
racism and police brutality, Otomo provides a convincing look
at the everyday world of refugees, who are continuously surrounded
by tension and insecurity. In the summer of 1989, a Stuttgart
newspaper reported the true story of a West African asylum
seeker who physically assaulted an intolerant subway ticket-taker;
fled, and became the target of a city-wide manhunt. Otomo
is a sober, fictionalized reconstruction of a tale that shocked
Stuttgart, and a gripping portrait of how institutionalized
racism drives a disempowered individual to violence and inhumanity.
West African immigrant Frederic Otomo (Isaach de Bankole)
lacks the proper papers to be hired for the most menial of
jobs; he has survived for eight years with the help of a Catholic
charity. Otomo is the target of verbal abuse, is thrown out
of his boarding house, and even scorned by neighborhood dogs.
He feels and looks out of place. A stoic bubbling pot of wrath
on the run, de Bankole's performance establishes Otomo's essence
without words-language cannot express the gravity of his situation.
As a ticking soundtrack counts down his fated minutes, Otomo
is helped by a kind, aging hippie and her granddaughter, establishing
the potential for an inclusive German society….if it is not
too late... |
Best Actress, Valenciennes
Film Festival 2000
35mm rental: $300
video rental: $90
DVD sale: $295
DVD also includes Bonus film Waalo Fendo: Where the Earth Freezes
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Director: Sander Francken
From: Netherland/Curacao
Year: 1999
Minutes: 95
Language: Dutch and Papamiento
with English subtitles
Genre: romantic thriller
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Papa's song is a drama of domestic
tension and cross-cultural misunderstanding. Nico Verema (Rene
van Asten), a decorous, somewhat gloomy Dutch magistrate,
lives happily with his wife, Shirley (Roman Vrede), who is
from Curacao. Shirley's two young nephews, in the Netherlands
to escape a bad situation at home, complete the household.
Its atmosphere of calm bourgeois propriety is soon upended
by the arrival of the boys' mother, Magda (Lisette Merenciana).
Shirley and Magda relationship is very stormy: they careen
from screaming recrimination to tearful tenderness. Nico tries
to mediate and soothe, but when Shirley, who cannot bear children,
demands that he impregnate her sister, the good judge finds
himself entangled in an intergenerational, trans-Atlantic
web of family dysfunction.
"Papa's Song" touches on a number of fascinating and difficult
themes, including the state of race relations in the contemporary
Netherlands. A. O. Scott, NY Times.
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35mm rental: $300
video rental: $90
video sale: $195
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Director: Horace Ove
From: Trinidad-Tobago/UK
Year: 1986
Minutes: 100
Language: English
Genre:
comedy
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| To mark the conclusion of their
"Third World Week" celebration, a cricket team in
a small English village invites a West Indian cricket team
from South London to a charity game.
“Not surprisingly, there's wariness on both sides.
But Willie Boy (Norman Beaton), the proud, wryly philosophical
captain of the Conquistadors, is intent on accepting the
invitation. Meanwhile, the captain of the Sneddington Cricket
Club, the innocent but overweeningly self-satisfied Derek
(Nicholas Farell), is confident of a handy Sunday afternoon
victory.
Obviously, the possibilities, both comic and serious, in
this cultural exchange are endless, and the filmmakers seem
not to have missed any of them. But, for all the film's
abundant humor, Ove, said to be Britain's first black film
maker, and the Oxford-educated Phillips, never let us forget
that racial tensions lurk beneath the occasion's sure of
good will. In the end, Playing Away’s pleasures are
subtle and genuine.” - Los Angeles Times |
35mm rental: $300
video rental: $90
video sale: $195
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Director: Jo Sol
From: Spain/India
Year:
2000
Minutes: 90
Language: Spanish with English
subtitles
Genre: a radical love story
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TATTOO BAR is
a bar/tattooing saloon placed in the old quarter of Barcelona.
It is a meeting point for the most different and colorful
characters. Through the window shop of Tatawo, Simona shows
her tattooed body with movements based on oriental dances.
Her skin shows the best moments of her life in India with
Francis, the man who tattooed her. Even though Francis has
left Simona, she is still in love with him. Mariel, the owner
of the Tattoo Bar and a close friend of Francis, feels a deep
and secret wish of reaching Simona's love. Mariel would do
everything for her. He would be capable of stealing the money
that she needs to erase the tattoos that Francis drew and
that cover her body. Then she would be able to start a new
life.
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35mm rental: $300
video rental: $90
video sale: $195
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Director: Menelik Shabazz
From: UK
Year:
1988
Minutes: 84
Language: English
Genre:
English
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| Time and Judgement is an overview
of the African Liberation Movement that spans a period of
400 hundred years. The film narrates the tribulations and
successes of people of African descent in and out of Africa
with a special focus on the struggles of the last century.
Through extensive footage of the movement in the Caribbean,
Africa, America and Europe, the viewer is exposed to the critical
political analysis of leaders such as: Maurice Bishop of Grenada,
Walter Rodney of Guyana, Jessie Jackson, Kwame Ture (Stokley
Carmichael) and Louis Farrakhan of the USA, Samora Machel
of Mozambique, Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana, Haile Selassie of Ethiopia,
Bob Marley and Marcus Garvey of Jamaica, and more.
Through the creative use of various art forms including
theater, poetry, songs and art, Time and Judgement establishes
a connection between a biblical prophecy with the times
we are living in, leading toward the final confrontation
between the heart and money - the heart symbolizing love
and life, and money symbolizing greed and lust for power. |
16mm rental: $250
video rental: $90
video sale: $195
DVD sale: $295
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Director: Mohammed Soudani
From: Senegal
/ Switzerland
Year: 1998
Minutes: 65
Language: Wolof with English
subtitles
Genre: drama
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Milan, like Paris or Stuttgart,
and like many other European cities, is the theater of the
drama of immigration. Demba reconstructs his story and that
of his brother Yaro, both Senegalese immigrants in Italy,
in a long and fragmentary flashback that begins with Yaro’s
murder and recounts their departure from the village, arrival
in Europe, the work they find selling lighters and picking
tomatoes in the south of Italy: the stages every “non-EEC
citizen” goes through in Italy. It is a story of immigration
like so many others but that most people are unaware of. Waalo
Fendo illustrates the dehumanization faced by so many immigrants
all over the world.
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video rental: $90
video sale: $195
DVD sale: $295 DVD also includes film Otomo
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