The Nigerian film industry is considered to be the second largest in the world, surpassed only by Hollywood. In the rest of Africa, other regional cinemas flourish. And alongside these, as increasingly everywhere in the world, independent filmmaking thrives -- challenging, innovating, exploring, charting new paths through local and global issues. This is especially true in cinema of the imagination: updating myths to interpret the present, turning a scientific eye on changes to land and people, and envisioning life in decades or centuries to come. This issue is a panorama, a broad range of perspectives looking out from Africa or back from the diaspora, a multifaceted portrait across place and time. The future belongs equally to every continent.
Sango is a popular god of thunder from Oyo State in Nigeria with his signature thunderbolt axe that causes lightning and disruption when used by him. We explored his childhood a bit, from where it all started, the questions he asked, the answers he was given, the visions about his future encounters
Tension grows between the nephew and wife of a schizophrenic man, when the woman decides to have her husband sent to a prayer camp for deliverance. A short film about the complex problems surrounding mental health care in Ghana.
Through living ritual and stop motion animation, The Water Will Carry Us Home reveals the story of stolen Africans being thrown off the slave ship whilst sailing through the Middle Passage. Upon crashing in the waves, a phenomena happens when the presence of Yoruba Orishas dwelling in the water save
Fantasy, science fiction and infatuation fuse as an obsessed neighbour invents ever-stranger scenarios for wooing the girl of his dreams.
Miss Lipstick is the only thing right-side-up in a topsy-turvy western world. Arn`t we already living in a collage ? Didn´t we notice ? 3 fashion models on their way through the megacity of Lagos/ Nigeria costumes: Renata Kos / text: Tunde Aladese, Michel Klöfkorn / sound: Marie Gavois, M
Developing embryos of the African clawed frog, Xenopus laevis. For Froglapse2F, the embryos start out at a variety of stages and the movie covers approximately 36 hrs of development. For Froglapse3, all the embryos start out at the two-cell stage and the movie covers approximately 48 hrs at which ti
They are the invisible masses that populate our streets. They are hiding among us... Professor Douglas is hiding among them...
Thomas is a trafficker, shipping European refugees who hope to find a better life in Africa. One day his boat sinks and he is washed up on the African coast as the only survivor. He then makes his way to the nearest city – Drexciya. According to a myth spread by the Detroit electronic act of t
Tears In The Rain, the award-winning South African sci-fi short by filmmaker Christopher Grant Harvey, is an unabashed love letter to the 1982 motion picture Blade Runner, and Philip K. Dick's novel 'Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep'? Set in Los Angeles in the latter part of the twenty-first cent
Wanita leaves home one morning, not knowing that her first prayer to her own ancestors has started her journey to the Dimsi "the earth you can' t see. Wanita could not figure out that her journey was blinded by her other self; her desire to be someone else. It is 150 years from now in a time when Af
In 1964 a Zambian science teacher named Edwuard Makuka decided to train the first African crew to travel to the moon. His plan was to use an alluminium rocket to put a woman, two cats and a missionary into Space. First the moon, then Mars, using a catapult system. He founded the Zambia National Acad
Monsoons Over The Moon is a mythical tale about a street gang known as The Monsoons who escaped an oppressive system. The story is set in a period of political dictatorship that has enslaved the people. The Monsoons are now resurfacing to help the youth in the ghettos break out of this dictatorship.
Pumzi is sci-fi film about futuristic Africa, 35 years after World War III --The Water War. Nature is extinct. The outside is dead. Asha lives and works as a museum curator in one of the indoor communities set up by the Maitu Council.
This film is a life in a day of Kenyan Afro-punk musician, DJ and Ted Fellow Blinky Bill. Explore Nairobi with Bill as he works on his new solo album in his studio, wanders the bustling streets in search of inspiration and DJs at The Alchemist, one of his favorite spots in the city.
Patricia lives in Kalongo, a small remote village in Acholi land, Northern Uganda. In the shadow of Mount Oret, which dominates the landscape of the village, Patricia is learning each day to accompany new mothers through the physical pain and the immense emotion of giving birth. « Together wit
Our figurine-sized superman hero embarks on an epic surreal journey that will take him across the Ethiopian post apocalyptic landscape in search of a way to get on the hovering spacecraft that for years has become a landmark in the skies. Birdy and Candy live in complete isolation, in an abandoned b
The sea was the first to see us and so the sea will be the last to leave us. A visual poem from Kenya that explores blood memory, creation myths and ancestry. A Visual Poem by Philippa Ndisi-Herrmann Editing by Angela Wamai Underwater Camera by Jahawi Bertolli
Kwaku Ananse is an intensely personal project which draws upon the rich mythology of Ghana. The short film combines semi-autobiographical elements with the tale of Kwaku Ananse, a trickster in West African stories who appears as both spider and man. Ananse teaches us that there are two sides to ever
Set in a post-apocalyptic African slum and city, Kichwateli takes the viewer on a spiritual and metaphorical voyage through a young boy's dream mixing new imagery of a young boy wondering inquisitively with a live TV as his head to show the effects of media on a young generation. This music-metary i
RASKANTA is a coming of age story about a girl who learns to heal her broken heart and find freedom of expression by playing the Setswana instrument SEGABA
EPISODE: SALT Joy is a 12-year old Masai girl living near the Magadi lake in Kenya. This lake is very special. It's a salt lake and once in a while, it runs dry. The salt that was in the water, stays on the bottom of the lake, where you can easily scrape it off. Joy investigates the special characte
Is it true that every human being holding a wild animal's soul within them? Can this soul be the only thing that determines how the wind will carry us in life? In a parallel world, a lone narrator accompanied by only his camera sets out on a journey with the solid hope of seeking an answer for the o
The distant future. A Nigerian space station in a remote corner of the galaxy orbits an artificial pinpoint of matter so dense it cannot exist in our solar system. It is a recreation of the birth of the universe itself, contained for the purpose of study, and overseen by Yetunde, sole crew member on
An alien invasion in Nigeria. Its nothing you have ever seen before.