Africa at the 2017 International Film Festival Rotterdam

For everyone who loves film, Rotterdam was the place to be between 25 January and 5 February. What about Africa, how was it represented at the 46th edition of the IFFR (International Film Festival Rotterdam)? An interesting section in this years' programme was called 'Black Rebels'. According to the curators: "Many democratic societies are facing the implications of the cultural divide and emerging racism. In film history there is no other movement that has been investigating and addressing these issues as thoroughly as black cinema. Filmmakers throughout the African diaspora have been commenting on this divide, since the birth of cinema up until this very day." Thus 'Black Rebels' presented films about and predominantly by black people resisting this divide. The American indie film Moonlight by Barry Jenkins already won may prices and eight Oscar nominations. An interesting project is Rebirth of a Nation. This remix by hip-hop musician DJ Spooky of D.W. Griffiths’ influential film from 1915 'The Birth of a Nation' emphasizes the racist core of this epic about a divided America by combining old images with new sounds.

For those more interested in developments in Africa there was Fonko, 'an exciting exploration of the musical, social and cultural innovation presently spreading across the African continent.' Fonko (by Lars Lovén, Lamin Daniel Jadama and Göran Hugo Olsson) shows a young generation that is rediscovering its musical and activist heritage. Artists in Burkina Faso, Ghana, Nigeria, South Africa and Angola are interviewed and a wealth of music styles passes by: Ghanaian azonto, South African House and the latest dance hype from Angola: kuduro. “Music is the weapon of the future", is one of the statements by the 'Godfather of modern African pop music and prominent political activist' Fela Kuti, which are projected over the film images. Rather unnecessary, the message was already clear!

Outside the 'Black Rebels' programme a limited number of films from the African continent made it to Rotterdam. The Wedding Ring was a real surprise, a rare feature film from Niger, made by a female Nigerien filmmaker, Rahmatou Keïta, descendant of the dynasty of Sundjata Keïta. She made a visually beautiful film, centrered on Tiyaa, a young aristocratic woman who returns home after her study in Paris. Tiyaa is lovesick and reluctantly follows her friend to a consultation with a zimma, a wise old man. She is advised to wait for the new moon to perform a love ritual. Filmed partly in the courtyard of her family's house in Zinder, we see the daily life of the women and hear their stories of love, marriage, desertion and divorce.

Cactus flower was one of the few films from North Africa. This first film of Egyptian visual artist Hala Elkoussy, tells a melancholic story about two women, one old, one young, struggling to exist in a tense Cairo after finding themselves homeless. The film focuses on Aida, the young woman who wants to be an actress, and her childhood memories and hopes for the future are expressed in dream-like sequences with dance and music. During their peregrinations the women are assisted by an angelic young man, their former neighbor, who at the end of the film is severely beaten up. Why, is not made clear, but it surely is a reference to the tense political atmosphere that reigns the country in the aftermath of the short-lived 2011 Arab spring. Meanwhile, the friendship between these three individuals is like a cactus flower which blossoms even under difficult circumstances.

Lastly, Wùlu, by French-Malian director Daouda Coulibaly, is another surprising film, which offers some views on Mali that differ considerably from those most Malian films offer. This time no images of traditional way of life and culture, no religion. Instead the film starts on a buzzling bus station in Bamako. It is here that unfolds a Hollywood-style story about a young man who, because of pure nepotism, doesn't get the promotion as a bus driver he feels entitled to, and then turns to drug trafficking to get on in the world and to stop his sister from prostituting herself. He is doing well in his new job, and his assignments get more dangerous each time, and when they’re asked to drive to Timbuktu in jeeps, right into territory controlled by Al-Qaeda and Tuareg rebels, the film becomes more than just a well-made thriller. The film shows the corruption in Malian society as well as the influence of organized crime on the political and military crisis that hit Mali in 2012. According to the filmmaker, "Drug trafficking was used to finance terrorism. To be able to buy weapons, you need money." A scene in the film refers to a real event, the 'Air cocaine' incident in 2009, when a Boeing 727 supposedly full of cocaine was found burnt-out in the north of the country.

Not a bad harvest at all, this year!

Elvire Eijkman