Film at Lincoln Center (FLC) and African Film Festival, Inc. (AFF) will celebrate the kickoff of the 29th New York African Film Festival (NYAFF) at FLC from May 12 to 17. This year’s festival, taking place at the FLC theaters with select virtual screenings, explores a host of themes under the banner Visions of Freedom, presenting diverse and interconnected notions of freedom pertinent to Africa, the diaspora, and the world at large while recalling activism of the past and ushering in new anthems of the future to embrace a united front for liberation and expression.

Schedule:

Saturday, May 12, 2022

6:30 PM: Freda

Freda lives with her family in a popular neighborhood of Port-au-Prince. They make ends meet thanks to their small street shop. Faced with precarious living conditions and the rise of violence in Haiti, each of them wonders whether to stay or leave, but Freda is determined to believe in the future of her country.

Location: Walter Reade Theater

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Friday, May 13, 2022

6:30 PM: Tug of War

Denge, a young freedom fighter, meets Yasmin, an Indian-Zanzibari woman, in the middle of the night as she is on her way to be married. Passion and revolution ensue in this coming-of-age political love story set in the final years of British colonial Zanzibar.

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Location: Francesca Beale Theater

9:00 PM: Shorts Program: Through the New York Lens

Location: Francesca Beale Theater

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Saturday, May 14, 2022

11:30 AM: Master Class with Haile Gerima

A master class led by renowned Ethiopian filmmaker, Haile Gerima, will take place on Saturday, May 14 at 11:30am in the Elinor Bunin Munroe Amphitheater. The class, titled “Cinema of Liberation: From Inception and Execution to Exhibition,” will center on the content, form, and aesthetics of liberation cinema, empowering one’s particular narrative logic and the construction of audiences for partnership in liberation.

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Location: Amphitheater

1:30 PM: African Voices in Changing Climates: Post-Production and Social Impact Cinema

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Location: Francesca Beale Theater

3:30 PM: Above Water

From one end of the globe to the other, water is becoming increasingly scarce. For a billion people, access to safe drinking water is almost nonexistent—a crisis with huge consequences. As a result, millions of families spend their lives trying to get access to this basic necessity. Houlaye, 12 years old, lives in a village in Tatis, Niger, and walks several kilometers every day to fetch water. It is abundant during the rainy season, but in short supply during the dry season. However, a source exists just 200 meters below the ground. When Houlaye’s aunt Suri convinces an NGO to build a well in the village, it brings the promise of renewal for those men and women who, unknowingly, had been walking on water all their lives.

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Location: Francesca Beale Theater

6:00 PM: Shorts Program: Mzansi Shorts

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Location: Francesca Beale Theater

8:30 PM: Simply Black

JP, a failed 40-year-old actor, decides to organize the first large-scale Black solidarity march in France. But his often-farcical encounters with influential personalities from the community and the self-serving support he receives from French humorist Fary find him torn between his desire to be in the limelight and his genuine commitment as an activist.

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Location: Francesca Beale Theater

Sunday, May 15, 2022

2:00 PM: The Sun Rises in The East

The Sun Rises in The East chronicles the birth, rise, and legacy of The East, a pan-African cultural organization founded in 1969 by teens and young adults in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. Led by educator and activist Jitu Weusi, The East embodied Black self-determination, building dozens of institutions, including its own African-centered school, food co-op, newsmagazine, publishing house, record label, restaurant, clothing shop, and bookstore. The organization hosted world-famous jazz musicians and poets at its highly sought-after performance venue, and it served as an epicenter for political contemporaries such as the Black Panther Party, the Young Lords, and the Congress of Afrikan People, as well as comrades across Africa and the Caribbean. In effect, The East built an independent Black nation in the heart of central Brooklyn. The Sun Rises in The East is the first feature-length documentary to explore The East and its continued influence on the fabric of Black Brooklyn. The film also examines challenges that led to The East’s eventual dissolution, including its gender politics, financial struggles, and government surveillance. Featuring interviews with leaders of The East, historians, and people who grew up in the organization as children, The Sun Rises in The East delivers an exhilarating and compelling vision for today’s movement for racial justice, showing just how much is possible. Co-Presented by the Be Reel Black Cinema Club.

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Location: Francesca Beale Theater

4:30 PM: Abderrahmane Sissako, un cinéaste à l’Opéra

With Le Vol du boli (The Flight of the Boli), filmmaker Abderrahmane Sissako takes up an unexpected artistic challenge: to stage, at the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris, an opera based on the history of Africa. English musician Damon Albarn, front man of Blur and the virtual band Gorillaz, composes and conducts the music. The two artists from ostensibly different universes join forces to design a work as powerful as it is engaged.

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Location: Francesca Beale Theater

7:00 PM: Ayaanle

Ayaanle is a 21-year-old man living in Nairobi who aspires to become an actor and conquer Hollywood. Despite his conservative upbringing and impoverished background, he remains optimistic about making it in the film industry, and hopes to emulate his hero Denzel Washington. His life is turned upside down after a series of unlikely events that lead him to become the most wanted man in Kenya, linked with terrorist activities across East Africa.

justice, showing just how much is possible. Co-Presented by the Be Reel Black Cinema Club.

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Location: Francesca Beale Theater

Monday, May 16, 2022

2:00 PM: Tug of War

Denge, a young freedom fighter, meets Yasmin, an Indian-Zanzibari woman, in the middle of the night as she is on her way to be married. Passion and revolution ensue in this coming-of-age political love story set in the final years of British colonial Zanzibar.

Click here for Tickets

Location: Francesca Beale Theater

4:15 PM: Freda

Freda lives with her family in a popular neighborhood of Port-au-Prince. They make ends meet thanks to their small street shop. Faced with precarious living conditions and the rise of violence in Haiti, each of them wonders whether to stay or leave, but Freda is determined to believe in the future of her country.

Click here for Tickets

Location:Francesca Beale Theater

6:30 PM: Juwaa

Shot in Belgium and the DRC, Juwaa is a subtly powerful drama offering African characters rarely seen on screens. Years after a traumatic night, a son and a mother reconcile and slowly peel away the layers of their complex relationship.

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Location: Francesca Beale Theater

Tuesday, May 17, 2022

4:00 PM: Simply Black

JP, a failed 40-year-old actor, decides to organize the first large-scale Black solidarity march in France. But his often-farcical encounters with influential personalities from the community and the self-serving support he receives from French humorist Fary find him torn between his desire to be in the limelight and his genuine commitment as an activist.

Click here for Tickets

Location: Francesca Beale Theater

7:00 PM: Jom, The Story of a People

Senegalese filmmaker Ababacar Samb-Makharam said, “‘Jom’ is a Wolof word which has no equivalent in English or French. ‘Jom’ means courage, dignity, respect… It is the origin of all virtues.” To celebrate the concept, Samb-Makharam uses the griot (oral historian) as the nexus of multiple stories drawing from Senegal’s collective memory. To inspire striking workers, the griot tells of a legendary prince, Dieri Dior Ndella, who sacrificed his life during colonialism, and Koura Thiaw, an entertainer who took up the cause of oppressed domestics in the 1940s, with both becoming heroes to their people.

Presented in its most recent, standard definition scan.

Location: Francesca Beale Theater

Date: May 12 - May 17, 2022

Location: Film Society of Lincoln Center - 144 West 65th Street New York, NY 10023

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