A project we are extremely happy to see on this year's TIFF radar is called "African Metropolis", a pan-African short film project developed by the Goethe-Institut South Africa. 4 of its protagonists are going to be in Toronto for 3 screenings over the festival's first 3 days as part of TIFF's short program “
TO REPEL GHOSTS: URBAN TALES FROM THE AFRICAN CONTINENT”: Directors Vincent Moloi (South Africa) and Jim Chuchu (Kenya) alongside their executive producer Steven Markovitz and the head of the Goethe-Institut South Africa's program department, Lien Heidenreich-Seleme.
You can meet and engage with them at our GOETHE FILM TALK on 6 SEPTEMBER 12.30-1.30pm.
I for one am intrigued to get multiple perspectives on and from Africa this year, be it
Caroline Link's "Exit Marrakech" or the Kenyan-German co-pro "Something Necessary" out of
Tom Tykwer's much lauded Africa project One Fine Day Films. (compare my previous notes on German cinema's love affair with
Africa, from "Sleeping Sickness" to "The White Masai", from "The River Used to be a Man" to "Colour of the Ocean").
Rasha Salti, International Programmer of Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), invited the Goethe film project for similar reasons: “We are thrilled to showcase them at this years’ TIFF, the plurality and diversity of voices will be a joy for TIFF audiences to discover. Through
shaping their very own aesthetics, these (African Metropolis) productions by emerging directors are a fascinating cinematic testimony from a continent for too long harnessed into the most moribund and derogatory prejudices.” The international festival response has been nearly overwhelming. Gertjan Zuilhof, International Programmer and Peter van Hoof, Head of Short Film Programme of the International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR) expressed their excitement quite strongly:
"Big city films from African big cities is just what we have been waiting for. It is about time we move on from pre-colonial nostalgia. The best would be if this project could work as a model for the future.”
The idea behind creating short films around the theme of metropolis was exactly that: to create a platform for filmmakers to make something good that will get them into big festivals and get them noticed.
“Apart from producing them, packaging them as one was an attempt to get them out of the short film ghetto that exists,“ contextualizes producer Markovitz, “often short films get lost at festivals, this way we get to show them to the main feature audience.”
Popular cinema in Africa was, until very recently, dominated by Hollywood, Bollywood B-imports, and Nollywood and its derivatives, writes Roger Young for the project’s web site. New voices, however, are emerging, post-colonial globalized voices that offer a different perspective on
Africa as hybrid, vibrant, evolving, and heterogeneous.
“African Cinema has a reputation a bit like homework or medicine, it’s good for you but it doesn’t taste nice. However the stories in African Metropolis don’t fall into an obvious stereotype. They are so different from each other, there is no overarching theme or style, each story has its own film language and approach.” says Jim Chuchu, director of the Kenyan segment, “Homecoming” (see photo), which has been selected by TIFF 2013.
The Goethe-Institut South Africa's Lien Heidenreich-Seleme defines their role and interest thus: “We wanted to change the perception of Africa in Germany, in Europe. Africans are sick of being treated as a continent that needs aid all the time, the images of starving Africans, the sexualised image of the exotic African woman.
We started working on changing perceptions outside Africa, but we have also started facilitating inter-African projects, and this feeds into the larger goal of changing the perspective of Africa in Europe.” Two years of intensive preparation lead up to the African Metropolis premieres: Based on 40 scripts submitted, the film makers were chosen from the six cities. A
mentoring program and workshops in Berlin and Durban ensued, starting off at the Durban Talent Campus in July 2012.
And also domestically, the omnibus collection has met with approval: “African Metropolis is an excellent collection of pan-African short films commissioned by the Goethe-Institut. They attempt to move away from the stereotypical by focusing on urban and peri-urban stories. The films are of varying quality, but all are expertly realised, and at least three are mini-masterpieces: the overall impression is of
strong new African voices tackling post-national, post-colonial narratives,” judged South Africa’s Mail & Guardian.
In terms of the larger project of challenging stereotypes, African Metropolis is certainly a progressive step, as director Vincent Moloi, who is at TIFF with "Berea", says,
“It’s only through films that we can start understanding each other. I sometimes feel that, as Africans, we are harsh to each other, we judge each other a lot, and these films represent Africa in conversation with itself.“
