Series Site
October 1–November 16, 2023
“We present this series annually, largely drawn from the African Film Festival National Traveling Series, a program of the New York African Film Festival. As its founder and executive director Mahen Bonetti notes, it “was founded to counteract the voice-over, where Africans were being spoken for over grim images, and to provide a place where the seventh art could become a weapon for us to reclaim our voices, to reappropriate our images, and to add layers to the narrative. In each frame presented by the festival over three decades, we have found our connection with each other and our footing in other people’s spaces, while presenting myriad stories about all corners of the African diaspora and the human experience itself.”
This year’s edition invites audiences to learn from and bear witness to the stories, visions, and histories of people across Africa and the African diaspora, whether through moments of the past that still mark our present day—the struggle against British rule in 1950s Tanzania, the decolonization of Congo in the 1960s—or through the events and struggles that color and define our current lives: families struggling with intergenerational trauma, immigrants caught between identities, migrants risking it all for a new life, and artists fighting for a fair chance at the same acclaim and attention given to others.”
—BAMPFA