NAB XVIII 2019

Current Affairs
A cinematographic journey
across the African continent:
Cinema Africa in Bayreuth
Text and photos SABINE GREINER
The film festival Cinema Africa
2019 brought four extraordinary
movies to Bayreuth, taking
the audience on a unique cinematographic
journey across the African
continent. Around 280 people attended
the four-day film festival and had a
chance to discuss the films with each
of the directors. The twelfth edition of
Cinema Africa took place between 21
and 24 October 2019.
Climbing the stairs of Bayreuth’s Cineplex
movie theatre, ticketholders could
already make out sounds highly unusual
for this location. For the opening of the
2019 film festival Cinema Africa, the Mozambican
musician Luka Mukhavele had
set up station just in front of the door of
“Broadway” – the largest movie hall of
the theatre. With an array of handmade
traditional instruments, Mukhavele performed
music that set the right tone for
the first film of the four-day event.
“Redemption is what
comes after the film”
With the Mozambican tunes still resonating
in their ears, the audience soon
settled into their seats and were visually
transported to Maputo, the capital of Mozambique.
Resgate – Redemption let them
dive into a part of town where gangs rule
and crime is omnipresent. Following protagonist
Bruno, who after having spent
some time in jail returns home with best
intentions to take care of his family, the
audience is taken on a fast-paced and
heart-breaking emotional rollercoaster
ride. They feel with the young man,
whose financial pressures soon pile up
and prompt him to follow down the path
that he was determined to leave: He gets
involved with the same crowd that led
him to prison in the first place and Bruno’s
life as a criminal takes its course.
The leading man is portrayed by Gil
Alexandre. As Antonio Forjaz, the movie’s
producer and cinematographer, explained:
“Gil was our mechanic. We
were looking for someone to play Bruno
and weren’t successful, when suddenly
we looked at Gil Alexandre and thought
‘This is our guy’.” He went on talking to
the audience about how accurately the
current situation in Mozambique is depicted
in the film. “The idea for the movie
came about when there were a lot of kidnappings
going on in Mozambique,” the
producer explained. “We wanted to make
a movie about a kidnapping; it turns out
we made a movie about Bruno.” And
when asked about the title, Forjaz said:
“Redemption is what happens with the
character when the film is over.”
Cinema Africa’s twelfth edition
For the twelfth time, the Chair of Romance
and Comparative Literature at the
University of Bayreuth Ute Fendler invited
African filmmakers to present their
work to the Bayreuth audience. Fendler:
“Art – and especially the cinematographic
expression – is an important means
in transmitting original stories from the
continent that show the large diversity
across the continent and counterbalance
the often one-sided reportages on Africa
in German/European media.” Fendler,
who also acts as co-speaker of the Africa
Multiple Cluster of Excellence, was able
to get the support of the Cluster for her
longstanding project. Cinema Africa has
always done what the Cluster’s agenda
now stipulates: to connect the arts and
the academic world with a larger public,
making possible a fruitful multidirectional
exchange.”
A tale of one who travelled …
During that exchange, the arts and the
world of scholarship still sometimes collide.
After the screening of the film Duga –
Les Charognards, set in Burkina Faso, the
first question aimed at Abdoulaye Dao,
the movie’s director, was: “But why didn’t
you show more of the socio-economic
troubles of Burkina-Faso?” It had not
been his intention to make a documentary,
but a work of fiction, the filmmaker
replied, adding: “I just wanted to tell a
story.” In fact, the story he told had all the
elements of a fable: A tale of one who travelled
in order to find a respectful burial
site for his best friend Pierre. During his
journey with the corpse, protagonist Rasmané
is rejected by the eldest of Pierre’s
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