The African Film Institute
Curated by Natacha Nsabimana
Admission starts at $5
January 23, 2024, 7pm
Brooklyn, NY 11205
USA
The African Film Institute is pleased to inaugurate a new film series curated by Natacha Nsabimana with two works by Rwandan filmmaker Amelia Umuhire and a conversation between Umuhire and Nsabimana, at e-flux Screening Room on Tuesday, January 23, at 7pm.
Taking a cue from the practice of an evening school as proposed by Christian Nyampeta’s Ecole Du Soir, Nsabimana invites filmmakers, artists, and scholars for a meditation and conversations around “African Cinema,” unfolding at e-flux Screening Room over the course of twelve months. What does the formulation evoke for us today? Is it worth holding onto? For whom? Comprised of a series of viewings sometimes followed by conversations, the curation will include feature films, shorts, and documentaries.
Umuhire’s experimental short film Mugabo (2016) and her award-winning radio documentary Innocent (2020) are excellent points of entry into “African cinema.” Moving between Rwanda, Germany, and Belgium, and in multiple languages, her work invites us to expand our imagination. Umuhire shows us how to tell stories centered on a geography (Rwanda) while also moving across time, space, and tongues.
Mugabo (2016, 7 minutes)
Mugabo is a short experimental film about a young woman’s return to her homeland after decades of living abroad. What begins as a silent film slowly unravels into an exploration of what trauma—and the silence around trauma—does to our perception.
Innocent (2020, 51 minutes)
In this radio documentary, Amelia Umuhire tells the story of Innocent Seminega—her father—as a young student, teacher, husband, and parent up until his death in 1994. Tracing her family history as she addresses him, Umuhire weaves together threads from his love of linguistics, his romance with her mother, his parenthood, and his life lived amidst a violent conflict—eventually unfurling her own story of her childhood and movement between countries. Innocent is an intimate portrait that resists the narrative canon imposed by the West on recent Rwandan history.
For inquiries addressed to the African Film Institute, please write to africanfilminstitute@e-flux.com.
For general and press inquiries, contact program@e-flux.com.
Accessibility
–Two flights of stairs lead up to the building’s front entrance at 172 Classon Avenue.
–For elevator access, please RSVP to program@e-flux.com. The building has a freight elevator which leads into the e-flux office space. Entrance to the elevator is nearest to 180 Classon Ave (a garage door). We have a ramp for the steps within the space.
–e-flux has an ADA-compliant bathroom. There are no steps between the Screening Room and this bathroom.