17th UR African Film Weekend 2024
Southern African Films
September 20-21, 2024 | Ukrop Auditorium
Guest Presenter: Chris Broodryk, professor in drama and film Studies at University of Pretoria.
Focusing on South African Films, this event is an annual celebration of African culture and cinema. Films are selected to enlarge the audience’s understanding of the social, economic, and cultural issues facing the African continent and of the Diaspora. The films presented are often not widely shown in the United States. The theme for 2024 is tentatively titled “South Africa in the 21st Century.” African Film Weekend is only one part of a comprehensive program that includes a series of two or three lectures on Africa and the Diaspora called “Africa Series.”
Hosted by the Department of Languages, Literatures, & Cultures and the Office of International Education with support of the Departments of Africana Studies; Geography, Environment, & Sustainability; Theatre & Dance; A&S Dean’s Office; and the Cultural Affairs Committee.
Pre-Festival Screening:
Brief Tender Light
September 19 | 4:30 p.m. (93 minutes) | Int'l Center Commons
A film by Arthur Musah
2023 | PBS Documentary
A Ghanaian filmmaker follows four African undergraduates through MIT, America’s premier technological university and his alma mater. The students embark on their MIT education with individual ambitions — to engineer infrastructure in Tanzania; to secure a better life for family in Nigeria; to contribute to post-genocide reconstruction in Rwanda; to advance democracy in Zimbabwe. Their missions are distinct, but fueled by a common goal: to become agents of positive change back home.
Festival Screenings:
Sew the Winter to My Skin
September 20 | 3 p.m. (132 minutes)
Directed by Jamil X.T. Qubeka
2018 | Historical Drama
Inspired by actual events and set in South Africa's rural Great-Karoo region in the 1950's, this film is a rousing reimagining of the hunt for John Kepe, an outlaw in 1950s South Africa who for 12 years robbed from white colonist farmers and gave to the impoverished Indigenous poor, becoming a threat to the foundations of Apartheid society. […] Qubeka looks back to the early days of the repressive apartheid regime and reimagines the capture of John Kepe, the “Samson of the Boschberg Mountains.” His acts earned him the title of folk hero to some, and notorious bandit to others. […] On one hand, Sew the Winter to My Skin is a keenly observed epic-adventure drama […] that captures the horrors of South Africa’s racist colonial regime. On the other, Qubeka subverts the conventions of the period by using limited dialogue. He probes "mankind’s inherent need to feed into mythologies that conveniently suit the order of the day."
Poppie Nongena
September 20 | 7:30 p.m. (106 minutes)
Directed by Christiaan Olwagen
2019 | Biography
This is the film version of an award-winning biographical novel Nongena (Die swerfjare van Poppie Nongena or The Long Journey of Poppie Nongena) by Elsa Joubert that tells of ripped and/or divided motherhood that the Apartheid system created. Black mothers in need of means to raise families were forced to leave their babies and children behind to go take care of other children as live-in domestic workers in white households. These mothers were torn between two sides with white children growing up with two mothers while black children with only half mothers at best.
Awards: 2020 SAFTA Golden Horn
Wesens (Beings)
September 21 | 8 a.m. (90 minutes)
Directed by Derick Muller
2020 | Afrikaans science fiction faux documentary
WESENS is a first-of-its-kind Afrikaans found-footage film. This sci-fi mystery, set in South Africa in 1967, follows four South African Republican Intelligence Agents as they investigate an unidentified object that landed on a farm in the Karoo. They record this footage with their Super 8 and 16mm cameras. What follows is a mystery that will keep you guessing until the very last line. Afrikaans and English subtitles
Number 37
September 21 | 10 a.m. (100 minutes)
Directed by Nosipho Dumisa
2018 | Crime thriller
A recent paraplegic is given binoculars by his girlfriend. The drama is set in a rough section of Cape Town. Number 37 follows Randal Hendricks, a small-time crook who becomes wheelchair-bound in a drug deal gone wrong, and his hard-working girlfriend. When he witnesses a mob killing, he tries to blackmail the killer. Afrikaans and English subtitles
Award: 2019 SAFTA Golden Horn
This is not a Burial...It's a Resurrection
September 21 | 1 p.m. (122 minutes)
Directed by Lemohang Jeremiah Mosese
2019 | Social Consciousness Drama
Grieving and alone following the deaths of her husband and children, elderly Mantoa […] prepares for her own death and to be buried alongside her ancestors. The upcoming plan to build a dam near her village eventually washes away all she holds dear. Mantoa mobilizes neighbors to fight for their land and their way of life.
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Barakat
September 21 | 3:30 p.m. (105 minutes)
Directed by Amy Jephta
2021 | Comedy, Drama
The widowed matriarch Aisha Davids decides to accept a marriage proposal that she plans to announce to her four sons over Eid. This runs into an obstacle set by two of her sons who because of earlier disputes refuse to be at the same time in the same room. At hearing the news, the four sons unite to prevent their mother from going ahead with the engagement. Aisha, her fiancé, and her daughters-in-law have to change the minds of the four men. Barakat, an Arabic word meaning blessings, is a story about celebrating life, culture, and the importance of family. Afrikaans with English subtitles.
Post-Festival Screening:
Stroop: Journey into the Rhino War
September 24 | 5 p.m. (134 minutes) | THC 305
Directed by Susan Scott
2018 | Documentary
This documentary about wildlife poaching is the result of a 4-year investigation during which the poachers, rangers, and other invested parties are interviewed. “It is an independently made film about the rhino poaching crisis — released in 2018. Expect unique footage — from the killing fields of the Kruger Park to bush town courtrooms and the dingy back rooms of Vietnamese wildlife traffickers.”