GREAT AFRICAN FILMS - Vol 5 The fifth installment in this series of award-winning films from Africa includes award winning films A Son (Un Fils) by Mehdi Barsaoui andWulu by Daouda Coulibaly.

A SON (Un Fils) / Bik Eneich 

An intense family drama starring French-Tunisian actor Sami Bouajila, winner of the Orizzonti Award for Best Actor, Venice Film Festival 2019 and winner of the César Awards, France for Best Actor in 2021.  

11 year old Aziz needs a liver transplant after being seriously injured during a terrorist ambush while on holiday in 2011. At the hospital, a family secret will be revealed.

A drama that expertly captures complex human emotions within their socio-cultural, historical and political context. ~ Hollywood Reporter

Directed By Mehdi Barsaoui / Tunisia/ 2019/ Drama/ Arabic With English Subtitles/ 96 Min

WÙLU

Shot for a good deal of the time using hand-held cameras, WÙLU is an African thriller that has an urgency and a vibrancy most Western made films lack.

Ladji, (a beautifully understated Ibrahim Koma), is the young man who, after losing his job on the cross-border taxis, takes up smuggling cocaine with lucrative if highly dangerous results.

A social commentary about the impact of corruption on intelligent, hard working African youths looking to improve their standard of living at home.

Official Selection TIFF 2016.  Winner Ousmane-Sembene Prize and Best Actor Award for Ibrhim Koma at FESPACO 2017.

Directed by Daouda Coulibaly, 2016, France/Mali, 95min, crime drama, French w/ English subtitles

Two coming of age stories that explore the life of 2 young women on 2 islands.

Set in Puerto Rico, ANGÉLICA is a drama about a young Afro- Latino woman who must fight to find her voice.

THE CATHEDRAL, from Mauritius, follows free spirited Lina as she faces an important decision that will impact her life.


ANGÉLICA

Angélica, after a long absence from Puerto Rico, returns home when her father, Wilfredo, suffers a stroke. This unexpected return and her father’s illness force Angelica to re-evaluate her relationship with her mother and family members who don’t accept her because of her skin color. She must face herself and discovers that she does not know who she is. After her father’s death, Angelica must decide whether to return to the comfort of her previous life, dissatisfied, but secure, or set on an adventurous path to rediscover herself as an independent, modern, strong, black, and Puerto Rican woman.

Directed by Marisol Gómez-Mouakad, Puerto Rico, 2016, 100min, Drama, English & Spanish w/English subtitles

THE CATHEDRAL

The Cathedral is a lyrical narration set in the beautiful and unusual setting of Port-Louis,   capital of Mauritius. Lina, a young woman in search of her identity interacts daily with friends and family in a carefree happy manner that will be challenged when one day her dancing    catches the eye of a photographer... The Cathedral is based on a short story by Ananda Devi.

Directed By Harrikrisna Anenden , Mauritius, 2006, 78 Min, drama in Creole With English Subtitles. 

OTOMO

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...

|Germany|1999|84 mins|drama|German with English subtitles|Frieder Schlaich, dir.|

"I was impressed by the decision to make Otomo a bit of an anti-hero, seeming aware that in desperate times, good people may say or do things outside the norm." -- Greg Dean Schmitz, Greg's previews at Yahoo!Movies

"Documents the institutionalized racism and xenophobia that painted one man into a corner, while never excusing the terrible means by which he took his final escape." -- Jessica Winter, Village Voice

"Much of the sense of size in this account of an immigrant worker, who is only one among many thousands in Germany, comes from the performance by Isaach de Bankole." -- Stanley Kauffmann, New Republic

WAALO FENDO: WHERE THE EARTH FREEZES
Senegal / Switzerland, 1998, 65 mins, drama in Wolof and Italian with English subtitles, Mohammed Soudani, dir.

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.

Two films that  explore the Black & Latino experience.

Set in the USA, INVISIBLE COLOR: AFRO-CUBANS IN MIAMI is a documentary about the history and  living experience of Afro-Cubans in Miami.

MESTIZO is a drama set in 1940 Venezuela about the conflicted identity of José Vargas, the  illegitimate son of a white colonial administrator and a poor black  fisher-woman.

INVISIBLE COLOR:  AFRO-CUBANS IN MIAMI

This latest documentary by the Dean of Afro-Cuban Cinema, Sergio Giral, investigates the black Cuban exile community in South Florida, since the first wave of political refugees in the 1959 revolutionary aftermath, to today. It tracks its presence throughout the region, and highlights its contribution to Miami’s civic culture through testimonies and visual documentation.

Directed by Sergio Giral / 2017 / USA / Cuba / English and Spanish with English subtitles / 47 min.

MESTIZO

The action takes place in a village on the Venezuelan coast, a place of fishermen and big haciendas. Jose Ramon, son of a white aristocrat and a humble black fisher-women, is trying to  define his own identity while dealing with social and sexual conflicts, power, culture, the law, and the impossible relationship he has with both his parents.

Directed by Mario Handler / 1989 / Venezuela / Spanish with English  subtitles / 82 Min.

RASTAS & MAROONS is a 2-DVD set featuring The First Rasta (Jamaica/France) a revealing documentary about Leonard Percival Howell, the man who created the Rasta Movement and Aluku Liba, Maroon Again  (French Guiana/Canada), a rare docu-drama about the Aluku or Boni, a Maroon ethnic group living mainly on the riverbank in Maripasoula, southwest French Guiana.

THE FIRST RASTA
Thirty years after Bob Marley's death, it is time to pay tribute to Leonard Percival Howell, The First Rasta. At the beginning of the last century, the young Leonard Percival Howell (1893- 1981) left Jamaica, became a sailor and traveled the world. On his way, he chanced upon all the ideas that stirred his time. From Bolshevism to New Thought, from Gandhi to Anarchism, from Garveyism to psychoanalysis, he sought to find his promised land. With this cocktail of ideas Leonard "Gong" Howell returned to Jamaica and founded Pinnacle, the first Rasta community.

Going far beyond the standard imagery of Rasta - ganja, reggae, and dreadlocks -this cultural history offers an uncensored vision of a movement with complex roots and the exceptional journey of a man who taught an enslaved people how to be proud and impose their culture on the world. In the 1920s, Leonard Percival Howell and the First Rastas had a revelation concerning the divinity of Haile Selassie, king of Ethiopia, that established the vision for the most popular mystical movement of the 20th century, Rastafarianism. Although jailed, ridiculed, and treated as insane, Howell, also known as the Gong, established a Rasta community of 4,500 members, the first agro-industrial enterprise devoted to producing marijuana. In the late 1950s the community was dispersed, disseminating Rasta teachings throughout the ghettos of the island. A young singer named Bob Marley adopted Howell's message, and through Marley's visions, reggae made its explosion in the music world.

Directed by Helene Lee, 2011, 90 min, France/Jamaica, Doc, English

ALUKU LIBA, MAROON AGAIN

Maroons are free Africans who escaped slavery in the Caribbean, Central, South and North America, and formed independent settlements.

Aluku Liba: Maroon Again is a rare docu-drama about the Aluku or Boni, a Maroon ethnic group living mainly on the riverbank in Maripasoula, southwest French Guiana.

The film follows Loeti who has spent years away from his village in French Guiana, working in extreme conditions. When the army cracks down on illegal gold mining in the Amazon forest, he is forced to flee and must use the skills he learned as a child to survive in the forest. His only hope is to find his way home to his people and reclaim his Maroon past and culture.

Directed by Nicolas Jolliet, 2009, 90 min, Canada/French Guiana/Suriname, Docu-Drama

KING AMPAW is a Germany trained Ghanaian filmmaker whose work has gained international recognition. Kukurantumi, The Road to Accra, winner Film Critics Award, FESPACO 1985, is one of two feature films - with No Time to Die - in this double set DVD "A KING BEHIND THE CAMERA" that offers a good-humored depiction of life in modern Ghana.

KUKURANTUMI: THE ROAD TO ACCRA 

STORIES OF POST-COLONIALISM is a double DVD that is a source of information, reflection, retrospective and critical thinking regarding the presence of foreign powers on the continent and what that entails for the general population as very well illustrated in THE BIG BANANA. In the nation building process, governments have to face a multiplicity of tasks to build the countries' economic, educational, health, and justice systems, to name a few. CELL 512 illustrates the challenges of building a democratic society in a new nation.

THE BIG BANANA

Banned in Cameroon,The Big Banana illustrates the poor working conditions in banana plantations and exposes the adverse impact on the people of a corporatocracy government that affords super profits for corporations at the expense of the local population.

The Big Banana outlines land grabbing tactics by company Plantation du Haut Penja (PHP) and the ensuing devastation for communities: poverty, pollution, and sickness from pesticides. Bieleu, who spent two years filming residents in the remote countryside of Cameroon also features local cooperatives resisting the devastation through business alliances with fair trade organizations.

By Franck Bieleu, Cameroon, 2011, 85min, Documentary in French with English subtitles.

STAND DOWN SOLDIER

The Tracker trailer from ArtMattan Productions on Vimeo.

THE TRACKER 

This two-DVD set featuring classic film "Ava & Gabriel: A Love Story" and contemporary drama "Papa's Song" serves as a window into the charming world of Curacao, part of the Dutch-owned Lesser Antilles in the Caribbean.

AVA & GABRIEL

Writer Norman DePalm offers two romantic dramas that bring to light the culture and character of the island. Set in Curacao in the 1940s, "Ava & Gabriel: A Love Story" (Felix de Rooy, 1990, 100 mins.) tells of the painter Gabriel Goedbloed, who arrives from Holland to paint a mural of the Virgin Mary in St. Anna's Church. Although Gabriel is there at the request of St. Anna's parish priest, the clergy and local citizens are surprised to find that he is black--originally from Surinam. The colonial Antillian society proves less than tolerant towards the visitor, especially after he chooses as his model a young teacher, Ava, who is engaged to a white police official. When the Dutch Governor's wife also becomes interested in Gabriel, tensions and hypocrisies rise within the community.

Directed by Felix de Rooy, Netherelands/France, 1990, Drama, Dutch and Papiamento with English subtitles

PAPA'S SONG

Addressing the complex and difficult state of race relations in the Netherlands, "Papa's Song" (Sander Francken, 1999, 95 mins.) is "an interesting drama of domestic tension and cross-cultural misunderstanding" (The New York Times).

The peaceful life of a Dutch magistrate, his wife from Curacao, and her two young nephews, turns suddenly volatile when the wife's sister arrives on the scene. The sisters' stormy relationship is complicated when the wife, unable to have children, tries to convince her husband to impregnate her sister.

In Dutch and Papiamento with English subtitles. Directed by Felix de Rooy/Sander Francken---Netherlands/Curacao---1990/1999---195 mins.

CONGO: WHITE KING, RED RUBBER, BLACK DEATH

BOMA TERVUREN, THE JOURNEY

White Lies Trailer - ArtMattan Films

WHITE LIES

WHITE LIKE THE MOON 

Two documentaries that explore the life of black people in Europe. GURUMBÉ: AFRO-ANDALUSIAN MEMORIES is a documentary that explores the contribution of Africans to Spain from the 15th to the 18th  centuries.THE BLACK MOZART IN CUBA celebrates the The Chevalier de Saint-Georges, a remarkable man who lived in France in the 18th century.

GURUMBE

Flamenco is synonymous with Spanish culture. Yet, since its inception, theorists have sidelined the fundamental contribution of Afro-Andalusians to this art form. As the black population began to diminish in Spain in the late 19th century, so too did their contribution to this extraordinary art form. In Gurumbé: Afro-Andalusian Memories, their story is finally told.
Directed by M. Angel Rosales, 2016, Spain/Mexico/Portugal/Senegal, documentary, 72min, Spanish and Portuguese w/ English subtitles.

BLACKS MOZART IN CUBA

Joseph Boulogne, Le Chevalier de Saint-Georges (1745-1799), became one of the most remarkable figures of the 18th century. He influenced the music and political life of his time. He was a genius composer and conductor, a virtuoso violinist, the best fencer in Europe, as well as the first black general in the French army.

Directed by Steve James, Stephanie James, 2008, 52 min, Guadeloupe, Documentary, English, French, Spanish with English subtitles.

Revealing films that give a voice to black women in the developing world:
* Sexy Money is a wrenching testimony of the challenges faced by two women in Nigeria struggling to navigate a corrupt and ruthless capitalist and sexist environment.
* Looking for Life follows two Haitian women's daily work and the constant battle for survival that they lead together with other women in Haiti.

SEXY MONEY

SEXY MONEY presents a subtle indictment of the social reality of poor women in contemporary Nigeria.

A reflection of the difficult social conditions of women in many societies in different parts of the world, SEXY MONEY explores frontally with much sensitivity and compassion the broken hopes and hard choices of poor Nigerian women as they struggle to reintegrate Nigerian society with dignity after being expelled from Europe where they were looking for a better life.
Directed by Karin Junger, 2014, 85 min, Nigeria/ Netherlands, documentary, English.

LOOKING FOR LIFE

LOOKING FOR LIFE introduces the viewer to two women, Anne-Rose and Rosemene, who each one has their own particular way of battling through life. The former makes lunches in a  factory yard in Port-au-Prince and sells her meals to the factory workers on credit; the latter is employed in the same factory as a production worker making pullovers and T-shirts.
By Claudette Coulanges, 1999, Haiti/Germany, Documentary, 60min, Haitian Creole w/ English subtitles.

Two exciting, colorful films spotlight the African roots of Cuba's culture by focusing on two legendary artists -- Rumbero Papa Montero and Filmmaker Sara Gomez -- in this unique box set.

THE LAST RUMBA OF PAPA MONTERO / LA ULTIMA RUMBA DE PAPA MONTERO

Get ready to rumba! The life of Cuba s last great rumbero is detailed in THE LAST RUMBA OF PAPA MONTERO, a bold story that captures Cuban traditions and culture through beautiful imagery, sensual music, and the most scorching Latin dance ever invented. Afro-Cuban mythology serves as the force behind the narrative as mythic figures guide the characters through the events of the story.

| Cuba/Martinique | 1992 | 52 mins | docu-drama in Spanish with English subtitles | Octavio Cortazar, Dir. |

“Montero is a celebration of rumba as heart and soul for a colorful Cuban landscape." - SLANT

SARA GOMEZ: AN AFRO-CUBAN FILMMAKER

Acclaimed filmmaker Sara Gomez comes to life in the rich, multilayered documentary SARA GOMEZ: AN AFRO-CUBAN FILMMAKER. Though trained in ethnography, Gomez became the first female Cuban filmmaker. Her background shaped her films, which reflect her interests in Afro-Cuban cultural traditions and women s issues. Friends and family members recall her talent, intelligence, and generosity. Ultimately SARA GOMEZ is a love story between Sara and her husband (filmmaker Germinal Hernandez), Sara and her family, and Sara and her culture.

| Cuba/Switzerland | 2005 | 76 min | documentary in Spanish with English subtitles | Alessandra Muller, Dir. |

"[SARA GOMEZ] is an extremely important documentary.... " - Kwame Dixon, SCOPE

Two African Griots connect Africa and the World: Youssou N’Dour in Return to Gorée by Pierre-Yves Borgeaud, Sotigui Kouyaté in Names Live Nowhere by Dominique Loreau. DVD also includes Youssou N’Dour’s live concert performance on Gorée Island. 

RETURN TO GOREE Film and Concert

RETURN TO GOREE follows Senegalese singer Youssou N'Dour's historical journey tracing the trail left by enslaved Africans and the jazz music they invented. Youssou N'Dour's challenge is to bring back to Africa a jazz repertoire of his own songs to perform a concert in Goree, the island that today symbolizes the slave trade and stands to honor its victims. With Youssou N'Dour, Moncef Genoud, Joseph Ndiaye, Idris Muhammad, and Amiri Baraka among others.

DVD includes filmed final concert on the Goree Island.

RETURN TO GOREE / CONCERT, Pierre Yves Borgeaud, Senegal/Switzerland/
Luxembourg, 2006, 108 min. / 52min. In English and French with English subtitles.

NAMES LIVE NOWHERE 

NAMES LIVE NOWHERE (Les Noms N'Habitent Nulle Part) - 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.

NAMES LIVE NOWHERE, Dominique Loreau, Belgium, 1994 , 76min. In French with English subtitles.

Frantz Fanon

 In the documentary Frantz Fanon: His Life, His Struggle, His Work (Algeria/France, 2001, 52 mins., in French and Arabic with English subtitles), director Cheikh Djemai uncovers and interviews scores of former associates of Frantz Fanon, a psychiatrist, philosopher and political leader. He became a spokesperson for the Algerian revolution against French colonialism, and as the author of Black Skin, White Masks, Fanon documented the effects of colonialism and racism on the people of colonized countries.

Amilcar Cabral

GREAT AFRICAN FILMS:  VOLUME 1 : Haramuya & Faraw! Mother of the Dunes - Two films are included in the package, making for an entertaining and edifying double feature experience: Drissa Toure’s Haramuya (1995) is a dramatic comedy about several generations of a traditional Muslim family scraping up against various temptations (crime, movies, drugs, music) of modernity in the city of Ouagadougou, the capital of Burkina Faso, and Abbdoulaye Ascofare’s Faraw: Mother of the Dunes (1997), from Mali is about a mother of three who struggles to support her family while saving her daughter from becoming the concubine-maid of a French colonialist. 

FARAW! MOTHER OF THE DUNES

Zamiatou is the mother of two quarrelsome boys and a depressed teenage girl. She is also the wife of a man arrested for political reasons who returns from prison mentally and physically destroyed. She struggles hard to survive in a poor and desolate area. She is ready to face anything to keep the family alive except prostituting her beautiful daughter. Her determination will take her far from her family… Detail by detail, this finely lensed first feature salutes the triumph of human ingenuity over terrible odds.

| Mali|1997| 90min | drama in Songhai with English subtitles | Abbdoulaye Ascofare, Dir. |
Best Actress, FESPACO 1997. Cannes 1997 Official Selection, International Critics Week.

“One of the strongest portraits of female determination to come out of Africa in recent years.” ~ VARIETY

HARAMUYA

Ouagadougou, its buildings and shantytowns... Wealth in a modern town and poverty in the suburbs. Through Fousseini — a Muslim firmly attached to his faith, traditions and family, Haramuya draws a picture of Ouagadougou trapped between modernism and traditionalism. Fousseini tries to take care of his family according to the old precepts and the code of honor inherited from his ancestors. One of his sons is a cinema projectionist and supports all the family against the will of his wife. The other son idles around all day long in Ouagadougou, looking for a girlfriend.

| Burkina Faso/France |1995 | 87min |comedy in French with English subtitles |Drissa Toure, Dir. |
Official selection, Cannes 1995 “Un Certain Regard.”

Revealing films about two very important Afro-Brazilian figures:

* Abdias do Nascimento (March 14, 1914 - May 23, 2011) was an outspoken and vibrant defender of Afro-Brazilian civil rights.
* Natalino Jose do Nacimento, better known as Natal Da Portela (July 31, 1905- April 5, 1975) was one of the founders and major sponsor of the Portela Samba School in Rio de Janeiro, champion of the 2017 Carnival parade.

ABDIAS DO NASCIMENTO

Loving and revealing documentary about Afro-Brazilian scholar/writer/activist /politician Abdias do Nascimento (1914-2011), a significant figure in and leader of Brazil’s Black movement who founded the Black Experimental Theater in 1944 and was very active in the international Pan-African Movement.
Directed by Aida Marques, 2011, 95 min, Brazil, Documentary, Portuguese with English subtitles.

NATAL DA PORTELA

The name ‘Natal da Portela’ is historically attached to the cultural identity of Brazil. Natal da Portela created the first escola de samba in Rio de Janeiro. The schools of samba are the soul of carnival in Brazil and major reservoirs of Afro-Brazilian culture. The film depicts the life of Natal da Portela as a young man from the favelas--the slums of the northern part of Rio de Janeiro--up to the creation of “la Portela”, the school of samba he created.

Directed by Paulo Cezar Saraceni, 1988, 100min, Brazil, Drama, Portuguese with English subtitles.

Two fiction films that explore the life of women in Africa. Set in Burkina Fasso AN UNCOMMON WOMAN is a comedy about a cuckold woman who decides to take a second husband. CAPE VERDE MY LOVE is drama that takes a critical look at the lives of women in contemporary Cape Verde.

AN UNCOMMON WOMAN

Mina is tired of her husband's infidelity and decides to take a drastic decision: She takes a second husband. Based on his conversations with women involved in polygamist relationships, he illustrates - to very funny effects - the daily life of two persons - in this case two men - who share a spouse. On a comedic tone, Abdoulaye Dao tells us a story of jealousy, infidelity, romance and revenge. Directed by Dao Abdoulaye, 2009, 101 min, Burkina Faso, Comedy, French with English subtitles.

An Uncommon Woman-Une Femme Pas Comme Les Autres- was a success in its native Burkina Faso and is cast with some the best actors of Burkinabe cinema.

Official selection, African Diaspora International Film Festival 2010.

CAPE VERDE MY LOVE

Praia, Cape Verde. Laura, Flavia and Bela are childhood friends. Each leads her own life and they sometimes meet to dance, dine and have fun. But one day the calm rivers of their lives break their banks and become wild torrents: Ricardo, Flavia's husband, rapes his pupil Indira, Laura's 13-year old eldest daughter. A film that takes a critical look at the lives of women in Cape Verde .

By Ana Lucia Ramos Lisboa, 2007, Cape Verde, Drama, 77min, Cape Verdean Portuguese w/ English subtitles.