Schedule:
2:00 pm - 3:00 pm: Twilight Revelation: Episodes in the Life & Times of Emperor Haile Selassie - Yemane I Demessie (58m, Ethiopia, USA)
The documentary film explores and analyzes watershed events during the reign of the former Ethiopian emperor, Haile Selassie. Using a wealth of archival footage and photographs, the documentary reexamines the imperial administration through the eyes of numerous notable individuals who played substantive roles and worked closely with the emperor. The featured witnesses include former ministers, a general, a state attorney and a judge, parliamentarians, high ranking civil servants and staff from the royal court. It also featured members of the royal family including his grandchildren. The observations and narratives of these individuals shed a new light on the personality, leadership style and the myth behind Ethiopia‟s last emperor.
3:05 pm - 4:00 pm: These Streets Belong To Us - Shareen Anderson, Lisa Henry (54m, South Africa)
The documentary looks at how ordinary South Africans are coping with the scourge of crime and violence. The film tells of three different Johannesburg communities: Kensington, a middle class suburb that is jolted into action after a street security guard is murdered while on duty; Alexandra, a mostly poor black township that has formed a community policing forum that patrols the streets, lending a helping hand to the overburdened police; and Hillbrow, a densely populated inner city neighborhood, which was a 'no go' zone for police for many years, but is now undergoing massive regeneration. The film is an inspiring look at how neighbors from disparate lives become empowered to stand up and take back their community, with a hopeful vision of the future.
4:30 pm - 5:20 pm: Real Voodoo - Sandra M. Whiteley (52m, Haiti, Canada)
In January 2010 a few days after Haiti suffered a massive earthquake, evangelical leader Pat Robertson went on air to blame the devastation on Haitians' 'pact with the devil.' He was talking about Voodoo. Was he right? Is Voodoo evil? To find out what Voodoo is, the film makers decided to make many trips to Haiti pre and post-earthquake filming Voodoo ceremonies in public places, sanctuaries, and in the homes of believers. The documentary is about their findings. It is not Pat Robertson's Voodoo, it is rather something else.
5:25 pm - 6:20 pm: Abyssinia Ethiopia Meeting Point (Abyssinia Ethiopia terre des faces brulées) - Denis Khalifa (51m, France)
The meeting of Genet, an Ethiopian Jew and Salomon, an orthodox Christian, takes us into the heart of Ethiopia‟s history and religious traditions. They travel 900 km, showing us their unique universe. They finally arrive into the whirlwind of the Ethiopian Epiphany, the most spectacular and colorful event in the Horn of Africa.
6:30 pm - 7:00 pm: Welcoming Ceremony/Opening Reception
7:15 pm - 8:40 pm: Surfing Soweto - Sara Blecher (85m, South Africa.)
Over the course of the last 3 years Cinga Productions has been following and documenting the lives of three of the most notorious train surfers in Soweto: ***** *****, Lefa and Mzembe. We have followed them on to the top of trains hurtling through Soweto. We have followed them into the heroin dens of Hilbrow, and jails with names like Sun City - all in the hope of understanding their frustrations and documenting the lives of the new generation of youth in Soweto. Surfing Soweto is the story of this forgotten generation.
8:45 pm - 10:00 pm: Indochina: Traces of a Mother (Indochine Sur Les Traces D'une Mere) - Idrissou Mora Kpai (74m, Benin, France)
Between 1946 and 1954, over 60,000 African soldiers were enlisted to fight the Viet Minh. Pitted against one another by circumstances, these two colonized peoples came into contact and a number of African soldiers took Vietnamese women as wives. Out of these unions, numerous mixed-race children were born. At the end of the war, the colonial army ordered that all the black children be repatriated to Africa, officially to protect them from the Viet Minh. While some children left with their mothers and fathers, others were simply taken away by their fathers, leaving their mothers behind. Abandoned in orphanages, those that had neither mother nor father were put up for mass adoption by African officers, as was the case with Christophe. Christophe long avoided facing the scars and identity complexes left by this abrupt separation from his mother and homeland. By encouraging him to undertake a journey into his own past, the film opens a little-known chapter of the Indochina war.
