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African cinema at Cannes 2010

It’s a not-bad year for films relating to Africa at the 2010 Cannes Film Festival.  Films and from all corners of the continent are represented, with the first African entry in the main competition in over a decade. 

Cannes Film Festival
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For a start, in competition, there is Un homme qui crie… (A screaming man) directed by Chad's Mahmet-Saleh Haroun - made in Chad  but a Franco-Belgian coproduction.

Un homme qui crie is touted as being the first African film in the main selection at Cannes for 13 years. That’s more than half a generation ago.

“It’s the right place for this film,” says one of the producers of A screaming man, Diana Elbaum of Entre Chien et Loup Productions in Brussels. Her company also produced Haroun’s film Daratt, which won the Jury’s Special Prize at the Mostra in Venice in 2006.

“It’s a natural step up for the director to be in competition in Cannes and I think it’s long overdue for an African film,” she says.

She feels “something is happening in Africa film-wise”.

Could Africa become the new focal point of interest for the more daring producer? Elbaum believes it’s simply what cinema is all about.

“Cinema has always been craving for new territories, new directors, new names so maybe Africa will be the next.”

But “Haroun is not new stuff happening," she is quick to add. "A Chadian film, yes, it’s the first. Yes, it’s new, but then again it’s not. Haroun has been around.”

Then there’s a film with north African historical, colonial, subject matter, Hors-la-loi (Outside the law) by French director Rachid Bouchara. It’s a story of three brothers set against the background of the Algerian War 1945-1962. His previous film Indigènes – Natives, about Algerian riflemen who fought with the Allies in World War II to liberate France, won a collective best actor Palme at Cannes in 2006, for the five male leads.

Another African film in the other main competitive section of the Festival, Un Certain Regard, is Life, above all by South African filmmaker Oliver Schmitz. It's a township fiction adapted from a novel by Allan Stratton Chandra’s secrets. The  Cape Town-based director has been in the game with about a dozen documentaries and fictions to his credit made over more that 20 years. And he contributes to one of the films in the compilation feature, Paris, je t’aime.

Apart from visitors from Ethiopia and Kenya amongst others at the Pavillon des Cinémas des Mondes, there are three films made-in-Africa in the Quinzaine des Réalisateurs which is not a competition, although some first features in that parallel festival are up for the Camera d’Or prize.

The opening film is Benda Bilili a French production shot in Kinshasha, directed by Florent de la Tullaye and Renaud Barret.

Frédéric Boyer, the artistic director of the Quinzaine des Réalisateurs explains why he has chosen a certain type of African film.

Benda Bilili is very African.  When I was working with Olivier Père at the selection committee for six years I was searching for urban films from Africa, because I was bored with films about old traditional African films. Maybe some are good. But it’s not the Africa I wanted to show. I want to show a very rough Africa, very tough and difficult, and optimistic too and this one from Kinshasha is exactly what I wanted.”

The Director’s Fortnight, as the Quinzaine is also known, has also selected Zedcrew made by Canadian Noah Pink in Zambia. It is about a rapper who, with his friends, try to make it to the US to become a star.

The third film shot in Africa, in Tangiers, is Todos vós sodes capitáns (You are all captains) by Oliver Laxe. It shows the trials and tribulations of a European filmmaker whose plans go out the window. The problems he encounters during his shoot become the subject of the film.

 

 

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