NY African Film Festival

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154 W 18th St # 2A
Manhattan, NY
212-352-1720
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Description:

African Film Festival, Inc. (AFF) is a New York non-profit 501(c)(3) arts organization. The organization, established in 1990, began as an ad hoc committee of African and American artists and scholars.

In the 1950s and 60s, African filmmakers began to create images of post-colonial Africa with nuanced understanding of Africas cultural diversity. Over the last half century, having sliced through stereotypes with exacting social critique, African cinema has become a unique blend of aesthetic experimentation, history and politics.

As African nations have constructed modern identities from traditional and colonial experiences, the role of visual culture in communicating these new transitional identities has immediacy for audiences around the world. The impetus for themes such as colonialism, post-independence corruption and chronicles of tribal customs often erupts from the ironies of contemporary life. But African filmmakers also draw from springs of myth, fantasy, humor and magic to nourish a narrative sensibility in which tradition and modernity encounter each other. The oral traditions, unique pacing and non-linear style of African story-telling have in fact become classifying characteristics of African filmmaking.

This kind of art is a powerful intellectual and emotional force for social change. As the twenty-first century begins, we are witnessing a great revolution in mass communications capabilities that drastically reduces the distances between cultures. Images, sounds and ideas are exchanged almost instantaneously, creating dynamic hybrid cultures. As Western consumer culture has influenced global society, so it has been invigorated by the differing sensibilities, traditions and styles of other cultures. Likewise, African film has evolved from its early exploration of colonialism into a new diasporic and international consciousness.

For almost twenty years, AFF has bridged the divide between post-colonial Africa and the American public through the medium of film. AFFs unique place in the international arts community is distinguished not only by leadership in festival management but a comprehensive approach to the advocacy of African film and culture. We are particularly mindful of the many ways in which cinema is as much a medium of cultural exchange as an educational gate-way.

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