By Aria Brent
AFRO Staff Writer
abrent@afro.com
Since 2006 the African Diaspora International Film Festival D.C., (ADIFF D.C.) has provided the D.C. area with an annual festival that highlights Black films from all across the world. This year’s festival is scheduled to take place Aug. 2-4 at George Washington University, located at 2121 I St NW, Washington, D.C. 20052
With a focus on highlighting the experiences, perspectives and issues that affect communities of African descent from around the globe, ADIFF is proud to showcase their lineup of films this year. Event attendees can anticipate topics such as women’s rights, colorism, homosexuality and gender segregation to be the focal point of some of this year’s films.
“It is a celebration of the human experience in the African world. When I say the African world, I’m referring to Africa as a continent, but also its diaspora,” said Mwiza Muthali, founder and co-director of Africa World Now. “These are the stories and various experiences of African peoples worldwide on film. You’ll notice in this festival there’ll be new films, but there are a couple of films from the past as well. We want to show those, to remind people how some of the issues that have taken place within the African world are still going on.”
When the festival first started, ADIFF D.C. was partnering with Trans Africa, but the organizations parted ways in 2014. Since then, Africa World Now has been partnering with ADIFF D.C. to bring the District a lineup of films that are giving depth to the lives of people throughout the African diaspora.
ADIFF has four annual festivals that take place throughout the year in Chicago, D.C., Paris and New York. Filmmaker Charles Uwagbai spoke to the AFRO about his film “The Wall Street Boy,” which is due to make its U.S. premiere at the D.C., festival.
“‘The Wall Street Boy” was a collaboration between Canadians and Kenyans because we shot part of it in Kenya and part of it in Canada. It follows the story of a young boy, he’s a mathematician who created an algorithm that changes the stock market and it shows the whole world coming to steal that equation from him,” he said. “One thing I really like about this film is the positive message that it carries. A lot of times when we tell African stories it’s always about the suffering, but this story carries a very positive message. For once we can see the bright lights shining from a little village in Kenya and the whole world is crawling to get that thing that he has.”
Uwagbai’s film is one of many that will be making their debut in the states. The grand opening film for this year’s festival is “Breaking Boundaries,” a documentary that follows the journey of a young, bi-racial woman who dreams of creating a legacy as a woman of color in rhythmic gymnastics.
“The grand opening film is ‘Breaking Boundaries’ and it’s about a young lady who was trying to compete in the 2020 Olympics. She’s one of the few Black people to compete in the rhythmic gymnastics event,” said Muthali. “She was one of the top rated gymnasts in the USA for that event. This is a documentary following her journey.”
Following the film’s premiere, there will be a question and answer panel with the star of the film, Stasya Generlova.
The three-day event is also scheduled to premiere a short film series, “Fighting White Supremacy: The African American Experience.” The three films featured in the series are “Keepers of the Flame,” “Judging Juries” and “How We Get Free.” All of the films focus on the battle against White supremacy throughout the U.S.
The festival’s series of events is truly helping reshape the narrative surrounding Black communities all across the world. Uwagbai explained how much he enjoys being able to share his work with a bunch of different audiences across the world due to the festival taking place in different cities.
“When I make a film, I want to share it with the world. This festival is amazing because it doesn’t happen in one place,” said Uwagbai. “They’re really taking the message ahead and doing the work for you in terms of promoting the film and the work that you’ve done.”
With 17 years of experience under their belt, ADIFF D.C., has much more to offer. Muthali explained that although Africa World Now is an activist organization, they began to do the film festival to help provide an outlet for filmmakers of African descent and to help provide a more accurate depiction of Black life.
“We have the film festivals to provide an avenue for filmmakers of African descent to present their stories. In the mainstream distribution system, African stories are not given a space there,” he said “The reason why we started presenting films, even though we’re an activist organization, is to give people a perspective as we’re doing our activism.”
“We want people to have a total understanding of the Black experience because once you have a total understanding of the people and the culture then it’s easier to work on policy related issues.”
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