AFRICAN JUBILEE FILM FESTIVAL: ‘African Women and Science Fiction’
Fifty years ago, 17 African countries won their independence from European colonial rule. Ever since that time, 1960 has been known as the Year of African Independence. With political independence came new struggles, like the struggles for economic justice, gender justice, cultural renewal and peace. African filmmakers and the African film industry have played a key role in representing these struggles, as well as comedy, romance and Afro-futurism.
The African Jubilee Film Festival, curated by Lynette Jackson and Floyd Webb, and co-sponsored by Portoluz, The DuSable Museum of African American History, the African American Studies and Gender and Women’s Studies departments at UIC and The Public Square, will mark this important milestone with films by African filmmakers, from founding fathers like Ousmane Sembene and Djibril Mambety of Senegal, to rising young women filmmakers like Jihan El Tahri and Wanuri Kahiu of Egypt and Kenya respectively. The African Jubilee Film Festival will hold film screenings and discussions on select Sundays, between June 27 to December 5, 2010.
August 1 – African Women and Science Fiction: Wanuri Kahia and Nnedi Okarofor Imagining the Future.
Pumzi,
Director Wanuri Kahia
Country: Kenya.
Pumzi is a 23 minute long science fiction film about futuristic Africa, 35 years after World War III, dubbed “The Water War”. Nature is extinct. The outside is dead. Asha lives and works as a museum curator in one of the indoor communities set up by the Maitu Council. When she receives a box in the mail containing soil, she plants an old seed in it and the seed starts to germinate. Asha seeks permission from the ruling Council to investigate the possibility of life on the outside, but her request is denied. She breaks out of the inside community and enters the dead and derelict outside to plant the growing seedling and possibly find life on the outside.
Special Reading and Discussion: Nnedi Okorafor is a Nigerian America author of science fiction novels for young adults. She is a graduate of the University of Illinois’ Creative Writing program from which she received her PhD, and is currently on the faculty of Chicago State University. Nnedi is the authors of four books: Zahrah the Windseeker (2008), Long Juju Man (2008), The Shadow Speaker (2009) and Who Fears Death (upcoming June, 2010) Nnedi has won numerous literary awards, including the Wole Soyinka Prize.