New Orleans Afrikan Film and Arts Festival

June 2008

It is with great pleasure that we announce the creation of the New Orléans Afrikan Film and Arts Festival, its Cinema Club, Black Roots, and Audio-Visual Workshop We're Back!

Given the renown of the City of New Orleans as a site of artistic creativity and its historic ties to Africa and communities of African descent worldwide, the New Orléans Afrikan Film and Art Festival seeks to enhance these bonds by showcasing and exploring the productions of black artists throughout the world in film, music, visual arts and literature.

Black Roots Cinema Club

The first season of Black Roots Cinema Club will focus on South Africa and be dedicated to Nelson Mandela who turns 90 years old in 2008. The inaugural screening will take place on Wednesday July 16, with additional screenings through July 19. Subsequently, Black Roots will organize monthly screenings in different New Orleans neighborhoods of South African and American films and discussion with their directors.

We have chosen to focus the first season on South Africa for several reasons: the symbolic importance of the South African nation and of President Mandela for people worldwide, the similar experiences and traditions of New Orleans and South Africa: their mixed populations, their history of determined rebellion against slavery and racism, their hybrid foods, performances and arts.

South Africa's successful resistance to one of the world's most violent regimes serves as a beacon of hope and freedom. And despite its many triumphs, South Africa continues to suffer ongoing legacies of violence, educational and economic inequity, as does New Orleans. We believe that South Africa's triumphs and ongoing struggles are particularly relevant to New Orleanians who are living in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Finally, the Cinema Club's South Africa focus in 2008 will build on New Orleans' Sister City relationship with Durban and enable our citizens, artists and scholars to dialogue and collaborate.

In counterpoint to featured South African films, we will also screen contemporary or historical documentaries, shorts, or feature films, focusing on life, culture, and struggles for civil and human rights in the U.S. with an emphasis, whenever possible, on films by and about New Orleanians.

The Audio-Visual Workshop We're back!

To play a further role in the rebirth of New Orleans, we are creating, with the help of local partners and institutions, the Audio-Visual Workshop We're back! Through documentary and fiction filmmaking, we will contribute to the task of sustaining historical and contemporary memory. By working with a team of local directors, actors, musicians, and technical staff, we will draw on and draw attention to the expertise of professionals in New Orleans and Louisiana.

The Workshop's first project is a documentary film recording a collaborative project of the New Orleans Ballet Association (NOBA) - in partnership with the New Orleans Recreation Department - and the Greater New Orleans Youth Orchestra (GNOYO). The film will portray the performances on May 30-31, 2008, the rehearsals leading up to them, and explore the motivations and reflections of the students, teachers, families, and organizations involved in this joint project. The film will celebrate the lasting effects that NOBA and GNOYO have on their students and the community of New Orleans as a whole. Two college students from New Orleans with interest and training in music and film directed the documentary under the supervision and guidance of the Workshop Director Joseph Gaï Ramaka.

The Annual New Orléans Afrikan Film and Arts Festival

With the support of partners, institutions, and a range of citizens and students across several New Orleans schools and university campuses, the New Orléans Afrikan Film and Arts Festival will also organize an annual week-long festival of motion pictures from Africa, Latin-America, the West Indies, the USA and beyond.

The inaugural Festival is being planned for spring 2009 and will screen films produced in and focusing on Latin America, particularly Brazil and Venezuela, and Cuba.

Each year the Festival will serve as a gathering point for people of good will to celebrate and examine together the historical and spiritual bonds between Africa and Louisiana, through works of film, music, literature and visual arts by artists from the entire diaspora.

We hope that the multiple programs of the New Orléans Afrikan Film and Arts Festival will lead to new creative projects-some of them collaborative, in filmmaking, screenwriting and other forms of expression-and to social projects to strengthen communities. Ultimately, they will create awareness of the power of media and other expressive forms to explore and crystallize the range of human experiences.

We welcome your support and participation.

Eileen Julien
President, New Orléans Afrikan Film and Arts Festival
Professor & Chair, Department of Comparative Literature Indiana University

Joseph Gaï Ramaka
Vice-President & Festival Director New Orléans Afrikan Film and Arts Festival
Independent Screenwriter & Filmmaker