Stories of African cinema at Cultural Caja de Burgos the last three Thursdays in January

Conceived as an awareness-raising initiative to show the cinema made in Africa and, with it, the reality of the continent, its immense dynamism and its capabilities through the eyes of Africans themselves, far from the clichés of our collective imagination, The cycle organized by the University of Burgos and the NGO Al Tarab returns this January with six multi-award-winning titles at different festivals, which makes it one of the most interesting of these 16 editions.

On this occasion, three short films and three fiction feature films will be screened with the peculiarity that one of them, ‘Ibrahim’, directed and interpreted by Samir Guesmi, is a French production and takes place in Paris, but presents a story of migrants Maghreb in Europe. The other films will travel to different countries of the Maghreb and Black Africa with disparate themes, some of them recurring in previous cycles, such as migration and the drama of family separation, the challenge to traditions, the germ of the Tutsi genocide in Rwanda. and African oral culture. All of them filmed with an exquisite delicacy that show the strength of African cinema.

The screenings will take place on Thursday 13, 20 and 27 January, at 8:15 p.m., at the Caja de Burgos Cultural Center. This year will be special due to the presence of Mane Cisneros, founder and director of the Tarifa African Film Festival (FCAT). The first day will attend the presentation of the cycle, which will also be preceded by a talk entitled ‘Tales from African cinemas’ will make a brief tour of a cinema that struggles to have its own identity within the variety of themes and aesthetic throughout the continent.

As the organizers recall, the history of African cinemas is also the story of the stormy, creative and unexpected relationship between cinema and the anti-colonial struggle. Their strategies have been and are as different as the circumstances of each country, of each era have been and are varied. Therefore, in the presentation talk, which will be at 7:00 p.m., a journey through its history will be made, emphasizing how it has been used successively as propaganda in favor of colonialism to be a tool for the consolidation of new African identities.

The titles chosen this year are the short film ‘Le Depart’, by Said Hamich Benlarbi, with which we will travel to Morocco through Adil, an 11-year-old boy. Both this film and ‘Ibrahim’ are presented with a common theme, they show fragments of the everyday, with the imprint that characterizes realistic cinema, without falling into dramatic exaggerations and showing two different but convergent points of view and with a common link, young people facing migration. After them will come the short ‘Al-Sit, by Suzzanah Mirghani; ‘Notre-Dame Du Nil’, by director Atiq Rahimi and coming as a premiere; ‘I am afraid to forget your face’, by Sameh Alaa, and ‘Twelfth night’, by Philippe Lacôte, which is also a premiere.

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