A mirror facing Africa: the 7th Tarifa African Film Festival, more than just a film event

A mirror facing Africa: the 7th Tarifa African Film Festival, more than just a film event

TARIFA, May 21, 2010/African Press Organization (APO)/ --

The Festival de Cine Africano de Tarifa (FCAT ? Tarifa African Film Festival, Spain) celebrates its seventh edition this year. From 21st to 29th May 2010, this event will screen up to 113 African films and it will bring together some of the most distinguished African artists, in the closest town of continental Europe to the African continent: Tarifa, an Andalusian town on the Spanish coasts of the Strait of Gibraltar - the two continents are in fact only 14 km apart from one another in this geographical area. The FCAT spreads knowledge about African film production by exhibiting a representative wide variety of audiovisual African works every year: from the classics to more innovative and recent films, from documentaries to feature length fiction films, from South Africa to Morocco and from Senegal to Ethiopia. Last May, internationally acclaimed Guinean filmmaker Mama Keita commented: ?the FCAT is a mirror facing Africa?. Similarly, the highly celebrated and Cannes-awarded Malian-Mauritanian filmmaker Abderrahmane Sissako insisted on the importance of an African film festival like FCAT, hailing it as ?a bridge that politicians never make?. The FCAT is not just the only competitive African film festival in Spain, but it has become one of the biggest and most renowned film events of its kind both in and outside Europe. Offering ?48,500 in prize money through 8 different awards, the festival in Tarifa embodies both an innovative cultural bridge - in which African films become the encounters between the two continents and their different cultures, and ?a tool for knowledge, raising of socialawareness and development?, as Mane Cisneros Manrique, founder and director of the FCAT, explains.

[Brief background]

The FCAT was born from a non-profit privately driven Spanish organisation named Al Tarab,1 which Mane Cisneros Manrique - founder and director of this film event - created in Tarifa with a small group of collaborators in 2004. The event was initially called Muestra de Cine Africano de Tarifa ? MCAT (noncompetitive showcase of African cinema of Tarifa) and was merely focused on the thematic exhibition and discussion of African films. In 2006 the FCAT became an actual award-giving festival, granting initially five different prizes ? and seven the next year - to the best African films as a means to generate a real support for the African film industry. In short, the FCAT was born in 2004 with the aim of spreading knowledge about Africa in Spain through African films. In only 7 years it has grown into one of the most important meetings for those who love cinema and Africa.

Source: Tarifa African Film Festival

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