By Ogova Ondego
Published October 18, 2012
Africa in Motion (Aim), Europe’s boldest and brightest celebration of African Cinema, runs at Filmhouse Cinema in Edinburgh and Glasgow Film Theatre in Glasgow, Scotland, between October 25 and November 2, 2012.
Participating in the festival with two films is Nairobi-based Lola Kenya Screen audiovisual media initiative for children and youth in eastern Africa. The two films, an animation in Kiswahili and English titled Little Knowledge is Dangerous, and a documentary called Vanessa’s Dream, were made by children (6-13 years) and youth (14-16 years) during the Lola Kenya screen skill development programme in filmmaking.
Miles Fielder, Aim’s press officer, describes the festival, that marks its seventh edition in 2012, as ‘Scotland’s biggest celebration of African cinema’.
The festival-held on the theme Modern Africa-exhibits a diverse programme of documentary and fictional films that explore the African urban experience, contemporary politics across the continent and startling perspectives of the new, the provocative and the experimental.
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The film programme, says Festival Director Isabel Mendes, “shall be accompanied by a wide range of events including directors’ Questions and Answers and master classes, workshops, music performances and a visual art exhibition.”
Mendes says Aim is presented in five sections: African Science Fiction, Arab Spring Documentaries, Nollywood, Modern African Identities and African Popular Arts.
The Modern African Identities contains documentaries that “address various identity issues in contemporary Africa through themes such as migration, Diaspora, sexuality, beauty, language and mixed-race identity,” according to Mendes.
While the African Popular Arts section explores contemporary popular African art forms show how aspects of traditional culture and notions of modernity are reinterpreted through African artists across the continent, its African Science Fiction counterpart shows how this genre is increasingly being explored by African artists, writers and filmmakers who are adopting and reinterpreting the genre to create counter-narratives and tackle persistent stereotypes of Africa.
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It is in the African Films for Children section that runs in Edinburgh at 11.00AM on October 28, 2012, that Kenya’s Little Knowledge is Dangerous animation and Vanessa’s Dream documentary films are showing.
Little Knowledge is Dangerous was made by Adede Hawi Nyodero, Samora Michel Oundo and Karama Kilibwa Ogova under the guidance of Maikki Kantola of Finland. In the film, three men seeking to impress with their clever-by-half antics, end up, in the classic Kiswahili way: frying themselves in their own oil.
Vanessa’s Dream, on the other hand, revolves around a girl ‘Vanessa’ wants to be a performer and believes the best way to achieve a goal is to dream and then do something about it. And that’s what she does! A documentary, it is a 2011 production directed by Adede Hawi Nyodero and Daki Mohamed-
This section, says Mendes, is “designed especially for our younger audience members and their families; AiM’s Children’s Day is full of exciting films and animations and inspiring stories from all over the continent. The day starts with our African Films for Children screenings’with subtitles narrated for younger viewers’followed by African storytelling.
