For its 30th anniversary, the New York African Film Festival is spotlighting the films of Nigeria and Sudan. Entitled ‘Streaming Rivers: The Past Into the Present,’ the online event will screen 6 feature films and 8 shorts, the latter of which are recognized as a forum boundary pushing content. The festival will transport audiences to the Sudan and Nigeria, two nations whose film industries were disrupted in their nascency — in Nigeria by an economic decline in the late 1970s and early 1980s and in Sudan by the dictatorship of Omar al-Bashir whose 30-year grip on the country was ended by the 2019 uprising. In recent years, Sudan’s film industry has been revived by an emerging crop of filmmakers, who are also dedicated to restoring the works of the veterans on whose shoulders they stand. Nollywood can claim the mantle of being Africa’s homegrown film industry, which has influenced filmmakers globally and provided the template for other nations to jump-start their own nascent motion picture businesses. Here is a look at 6 of those shorts.
SOURCE: OKAYAFRICA