Sembène's debut feature made a profound impression at international film festivals in 1966, and the evolution of African cinema can be dated from this point. Shot in a simple, New Wace style, it tells a bitter story of exile and despair. The heroine is a Senegalese maid taken to the Riviera by her employers. Once out of Africa she realizes what being African means to Eurpoeans: it means being a thing, a black girl. Sober and restrained, Black Girl never loses sight of its central theme of the myths of colonization.

Borom Sarret is a classic of neorealist filmmaking. It follows a cart driver through the streets of Dakar as he picks up fares and struggles with a system that is stacked against him. This beautiful short film immediately propelled Sembène to the forefront of world filmmaking.

In Faat Kine, Sembene calls his fellow Africans to a reckoning of the post-independence era at the beginning of a new century. At 77, he sums up 40 years of path-breaking filmmaking with a penetrating analysis of the interplay of gender, economics and power in today's Africa. Sembene accomplishes all this through the deceptively light domestic drama of Faat Kine, a gas station operator born, significantly, the same year as Senegalese independence, 1960.

Sembène's second feature unlocked for the first time on film the complex daily world of modern Africa. This deceptively simple story of a man who receives a money order and, in his attempts to cash it, encounters an intimidating barrage of bureacracy, becomes a witty, masterful protrait of an ancient civilization in the throes of change.

Moolaadé is a rousing film directed against the still-common African practice of female circumcision. Set in a small village, four girls facing ritual "purification" flee to the household of Collé Ardo Gallo Sy, a strong-willed woman who has managed to shield her own teenage daughter from mutilation. Collé invokes the time-honored custom of moolaadé (sanctuary) to protect the young fugitives. Tension mounts as the ensuing stand-off pits Collé against village traditionalists (both males & females), endangering the prospective marriage of her daughter to the heir-apparent to the tribal throne.

This satire deals with a self-satisfied businessman who is afflicted with the xala (pronounced "ha-la"): a cruse that rendrers its victims impotent. While he chases after witch doctors and soothsayers in search of a cure, his impotence becomes a mirror of the impotence of young African nations over-dependent on white technology.

A chronicle of a rather particular afternoon during which the lives of three people changes dramatically. Alex, the husband, goes to his in-laws' to bring home his second wife. Elise, Alex's childhood sweetheart and first wife, accompanies him — as she must, according to tradition. And Josephine, the young bride, leaves her parents to begin a new life... From the preparations to the minister's blessing, the wedding party to the awkward end of the festivities, the director films a polygamous marriage ceremony.

With irony and humor, A Trip to the Country questions the validity of developmental discourse which deems all things European to be modern and all things African to be archaic. Retracing the travels of his youth, the director documents his own voyage from Youande, the capital, to his village, Bandjoun. Along the way he meets ordinary people and listens to their hopes, disappointments, and frustrations in the face of a changing society. These personal observations coalesce into a thoughtful meditation on the very definition of modernity in the African context.

The Colonial Misunderstanding is a bold exploration of Germany's "African past" — specifically, its attempts to colonize parts of Africa through religion and trade. NYAFF favorite Jean-Marie Teno looks at the role that missionaries played in laying the groundwork for colonialism in countries like Togo, Cameroon, Namibia and South Africa. The later crimes of the Nazi regime were actually anticipated by Germany's genocidal war against the Herrero people in Namibia (1904-1907), which forcibly dispersed them and interned them in concentration camps. Through interviews with experts from Germany and Africa, Teno paints a provocative picture of the relatively short but nevertheless horrific colonial history of Germany in Africa.

In West Africa during the late 17th century, King Adanggaman leads a war against his neighboring tribes, ordering his soldiers to torch enemy villages, kill the elderly and capture the healthy tribesmen to sell to the European slave traders. When his village falls prey to one of Adanggaman's attacks, Ossei manages to escape, but his family is murdered except for his captured mother. Chasing after the soldiers in an effort to free her, Ossei is befriended by a fierce warrior named Naka.

Set in the courtyard of a mud walled house in Bamako, the capitol city of Mali, the intimate personal story of an African couple on the verge of breaking up is told alongside very public political proceedings. African civil society is taking action against the World Bank and the IMF whom they directly blame for Africa's woes. A lush mix of warm colors and inspirational music, Bamako is a unique opportunity for a worldwide audience to become familiar with contemporary Africa.

A hypnotically languorous road movie with an upbeat political kick. The story follows a smalltime traveling sideshow – Magician, Strong Man, Exotic Dancer – as they ply the dusty back roads of Brazil in the face of increasing disinterest. Filmed over 9,000 miles, Diegues' film effortlessly conveys a sense of a living, breathing country as few films have before.

Started only a week after the Cuban missile crisis and designed to be Cuba's answer to both Sergei Eisenstein's propaganda masterpiece, Potemkin, and Jean-Luc Godard's freewheeling romance, Breathless, I Am Cuba turned out to be something quite unique. The plot, or rather plots, expansively explores the seductive, decadent (and marvelously photogenic) world of Batista's Cuba – juxtaposing images of extremes with seamless beauty. I Am Cuba has recently been reified by Hollywood's great directors, many years after it languished in obscurity, following its initial popularity and acclaim post-release.

The first major film statement on jazz and the granddaddy of festival films. Noted photographer Bert Stern filmed a virtual Who's Who of jazz and blues at the 1958 Newport Jazz Festival: including Thelonius Monk, Louis Armstrong, Dinah Washington and Mahalia Jackson.

Killer of Sheep examines the black Los Angeles ghetto of Watts in the mid-1970s through the eyes of Stan, a sensitive dreamer who is growing detached and numb from the psychic toll of working at a slaughterhouse. Frustrated by money problems, he finds respite in moments of simple beauty: the warmth of a coffee cup against his cheek, slow dancing with his wife in the living room, holding his daughter. The film offers no solutions; it merely presents life — sometimes hauntingly bleak, sometimes filled with transcendent joy and gentle humor.

This highly acclaimed film about the relationship between Jamaican poverty and the practices of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund features interviews with both world leaders and sweatshop workers in order to highlight the consequences of globalization.

A sequel, of sorts, to Ganga Zumba. After the revolt of 1641, groups of runaway black slaves escaped to mountainous strongholds where they formed self-governing, utopian communities known as quilombos. This stirring fusion of folklore, political impact and dynamic storytelling is realized in vibrant tropical colors and set to the pulsing beat of Gilberto Gil's score.

Set in Martinique in 1931, Sugar Cane Alley paints a rich impasto of native life under French colonial rule, filtered through the coming-of-age of a bright, sweetly opportunistic boy learning to reconcile the value of his shanty-town roots with the education opportunities that beckon him to the big city.

Afro@Digital asks how digital technology can best serve the interests of Africa? For example, it could be used simply to let the ruling elites and global corporations further monopolize the flow of information within society. Or it could take advantage of the internet's multi-directionality to become an instrument for increased governmental transparency and citizen participation, including the participation of African professionals who live abroad and who want to assist their native countries. Young filmmakers point out that the comparative cheapness of high quality digital equipment now allows them to create, preserve and share their own memory of themselves and aspirations for the future. Although the internet and digital television will inevitably open Africa to further globalization, this documentary shows Africans responding positively by developing their own vigorous presence in a new international, digital cultural ecology.

Dôlè offers a Gabonese perspective on the global crisis facing today's youth. With familial and societal structures crumbling, young people are increasingly thrown back for support on each other and an all-encompassing international pop culture. This film reveals that, whether in Libreville or in our own inner cities and suburbs the underlying causes of youthful disaffection can be remarkably similar. Dôlè provides one of the most affectionate and affecting portraits of African youth poised precariously on the cusp of modernity.

The Hero (O Herói) is the story of Angola, a nation torn apart by forty years of uninterrupted war, and now trying imperfectly but courageously to piece itself back together. It is also the story of a city, Luanda, like so many in the Third World, trying to absorb the millions of people displaced by civil strife and global economic change. After a thirteen year national liberation struggle against the Portuguese colonialists ended with independence in 1975, Angola plunged immediately into a brutal civil war. The national MPLA government, backed initially by Cuba and the Soviet Union, and the UNITA rebels, supported by the U.S. and the South African apartheid regime, remained locked in conflict until 2003, long after the end of the Cold War itself.
Winner, Grand Prize, World Dramatic Competition, 2005 Sundance Film Festival

Prosper Merimée's novella, adapted in Bizet's celebrated opera, has already received 52 film interpretations, yet Karmen Geï is the first African Carmen and, arguably, the first African filmed "musical." Accordingly, Gaï Ramaka has completely replaced Bizet's score and the usual staging with indigenous Senegalese music and choreography. Like every Carmen, Karmen Geï is about the conflict between infinite desire for freedom and the laws, conventions, languages, the human limitations which constrain that desire. Since this is an African Carmen, freedom necessarily has a political dimension. The opening scene is set in a women's prison on Goree Island, site of the notorious slave castle. Karmen and the women in the prison use dance and music as a weapon of resistance against dehumanizing regimentation as has so often been the case throughout the African Diaspora.

Dani Kouyate mourns the passing of the authentic griot, the storyteller who was once the African custodian of cultural wisdom and information, counselor of kings, genealogist, historian, musician, artist – Belen Tigui (Keeper of the Word) of any community. In Keita, he tells the story of Djeliba Kouyate, an old griot who charged in the twilight of his life to recount to young Mabo Keita the origin of his name, a name that carries with it an epic saga of the founder of the Madingo Empire.

Mapantsula was the first anti-apartheid feature film by, for and about black South Africans. Filmed inside Soweto, scored to the urban beat of "Township Jive," it has been called a South African The Harder They Come. Mapantsula tells the story of Panic, a petty gangster who inevitably becomes caught up in the growing anti-apartheid struggle and has to choose between individual gain and a united stand against the system. This film will give viewers an insider's tour of township life and a foretaste of the vibrant popular cinema promised by the new, democratic South Africa.

Forgiveness is one of the most moving and complex films on the seminal theme of truth and reconciliation to have been produced in South Africa. It is filled with images of sand-swept roads, wind driven clouds and pounding surf, all symbolizing letting go of the past and surrendering to the forward motion of time. It is ultimately a film about time, about our unresolved relation to the past, not about forgetting it but forgiving it, so we can finally let go of it and move on into the future.

Africa Dreaming is a landmark in African television - a series drawing together for the first time broadcasters, television producers, film directors and writers from across the continent. Africa Dreaming was designed to give Africans a rare opportunity to speak directly to each other in their own words and images. It is also the first continent-wide media project in which South Africa played a leading role.
The series includes six dramatic shorts, four of which are included on this DVD, described below:

Sophia's Homecoming reminds us that the devastating personal effects of the massive social dislocations caused by apartheid can never be erased. Sophia, like so many other women, becomes a self-reliant provider for her family, working as a domestic for a white family in Windhoek for 12 years. When her husband Naftali finally finds a job, she returns home with the dream of resuming her former family life. She quickly discovers that during her absence her sister Selna has replaced her in the affections of her children - and her husband.

This film explores the impact of the modern world on the traditional male society of the Maghreb. It is a film about men who prefer to live life as an abstract game and the free-spirited woman who changes everything. Said and Youssef have fulfilled a life-long dream by opening a "chess bar" in the middle of the desert. They sit around drinking palm wine, playing board games and composing love poetry to imaginary women; all this changes with the arrival of the sexually liberated and uninhibited Sarah.

Michael, an idealistic foreign doctor, has had little success bringing the promises of modernity to a dusty village of the damned in the Sahel. His lover, Sunma, a teacher and native of the place, has no illusions about the village, believing it to be "a world which will cannibalize its children" (according to a Wolof incantation) in a futile effort to compensate for human powerlessness. She simply wants to live and love - and leave before the killing starts. But Michael is transfixed; he stays and tries, ineffectively, to prevent the villagers from sacrificing a mentally disturbed mute boy he has befriended. Perhaps Michael sees in himself, even in his hope for scientific progress, a reflection of the villagers' own horror at human fate.

At the center of this story is a woman felt only by her absence - in other words, a dream of a woman, perhaps symbolic of the lost dream for a post-independence Mozambique. Salomão owns a bar in Maputo, still down at the heels after the civil war, where the local machos drink and talk of soccer and women. He rather gruffly takes care of his adopted nephew Betinho, a war orphan. Some years before, a young woman, Julia, left him because he refused to let her work or study outside the house. Instead, she married Saide, the man next door. Nothing has been heard of her for months, but the sound of constant wife-beating comes from inside Saide's house. When Salomão finally decides to put a stop to the beatings, he gets quite a surprise.