Africa shows it’s more than safaris in İzmir

İZMİR - Anatolia News Agency

The opening film of the African film event in İzmir will be ‘Drum,’ directed by Zola Maseko, which won the grand prize at the 2005 FESPACO cinema festival.

Moviegoers in İzmir will have a chance to see prime examples of African cinema, the world’s youngest film industry, at an event called “Afrika!” Significant African films will be screened at the French Culture Center at an event organized jointly with the İzmir Cinema Association Sept. 26 to 28.

Reflecting the diversity of the continent’s cinema industry, five major movies from African cinema that have also screened at FESPACO, Africa’s main film festival, will be shown at the event. The opening night film will be “Drum,” directed by Zola Maseko, which won the grand prize at the 2005 FESPACO cinema festival.
The director of the event, Nesim Bencoya, told Anatolia news agency Sept. 24 that Africa is known only for safaris and its wildlife, but the continent also has stories to tell and a cinema industry to tell those stories. The African continent has been producing films for about 50 years.

“Finye” (Wind) by Souleymane Cisse, which won the “Golden Tanit” award in 1982; “Tila” (Custom) by Idrissa Ouedraogo; “Saraounia” (Sybil) by Med Hondo; and “Heremakono” (Waiting for Happiness) by Abderrahmane Sissako, which won the grand prize at FESPACO in 2003, are a few of the films.