Zanzibar 2008

Located on Zanzibar Island in Stone Town, a World Heritage site, this year's festival improved on itself as East Africa's largest cultural event. The festival concentrates on films that have been made in Africa (mostly Black Africa) and how countries in the Indian Ocean region are affected by their global diasporas.
    The theme of this year's festival was Cultural Crossroads. The festival presented a variety of recent production from the region in almost all kinds of filmmaking: feature films, documentaries, shorts and animations. The FIPRESCI prize was chosen from just the feature films section. In competition were 16 films, among them productions from leading African filmmaking countries including Nigeria, Ivory Coast and Senegal. For the final decision on the prize, the FIPRESCI jury selected three films: The Kadogo Brothers by Joseph Muganga, the Ivory Coast production Ezra by Newton I. Aduaka, and the Nigerian-French co-production Tartina City by director Issa Serge Coelo from Chad.

Zanzibar International Film Festival (11th edition, July 11-20, 2008): www.ziff.or.tz
FIPRESCI Prize: Ezra by Newton I. Adauka (Nigeria/France, 2007). Details

Reports:

Childhoods End. The innocent but easily corruptible child is portrayed to a violent and traumatic extreme in Ezra. Raghavendra Mirle looks at this powerful film which depicts how children were in demand as new recruits ready for war.
Democratization through Filmmaking in Africa. Combining close analyses of three films followed by an appraisal of the media in Afica and how it affects the film industry, Télesphore Mba Bizo attempts to truthfully convey the state of the cinema industry on the continent today.
Political Commitment in the African Way. Nenad Dukic looks at films which show repressive methods that have the nature of a universal evil everywhere, and that the African model does not differ very much from other models, only confirms them.

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