Flora Gomes (Guinea Bissau)
Nha Fala/ My Voice (2002)
Po di Sangui/Tree of Blood (1996)
Os Olhos Azuis de Yonta/Yonta's Blue eyes (1992)
Mortu Nega / Death Denied (1987)

Flora (Florentino) Gomes was born in 1949 in Cadique, Guinea Bissau. He studied film in 1972 at the Cuban Institute of Arts and Cinematography under the direction of Santiago Alvarez before working with filmmaker Paulin S. Vieyra in Senegal. He later co-directed two short films "La reconstruction" (The Reconstruction) and "Anos no oça lura". In 1987, he directed his first feature film "Mortu nega" which received two special commendations from the jury at the Venice Film Festival in 1988, then "Yonta's Blue Eyes" selected for the Un certain regard section at the Cannes Film Festival in 1992. "Po di sangui" was his third feature film, screened in the official competition at Cannes in 1996.

"Weaving Cinema, Weaving History" Flora Gomes visits University of Michigan, Program in Film & Video Studies.

"La voix de Vita" by Olivia Marsaud

GUEST FILM SCHOLAR

Olivier Barlet (France)
African Cinemas : Decolonizing The Gaze (trans.2000)
Winner of the French National Film Center's best film book

Born in Paris in 1952, Olivier Barlet has published numerous translations of books both about Africa and written by Africans, along with a number of his own works. Journalist and film critic, Barlet writes for several magazines and journals. He is editor of the series "Images Plurielles" with L'Harmattan Press, which additionally published his award-winning book Les Cinémas d'Afrique noire : le regard en question (1997 Prize 'Art and Essay' from the National Cinematography Center of France,) translated into four languages (English title: African Cinema : Decolonizing the Gaze, Zed Books 2000.) Since 1997, Barlet has served as Editor-in-Chief of Africultures (L'Harmattan Press) a monthly magazine of African culture. The bilingual French/English Africultures website features a vast database on African Cinema. www.africultures.com

"Modernité de l'exception" (on African Cinema) Editorial, Africultures:45 "Les cinémas d'Afrique, une exception ? Oui, par bien des côtés." , by Olivier Barlet

S a r r a o u n i a

Director, Med Hondo
Distributed by SPIA Media Production

Claire Andrade-Watkins, Emerson College
Associate Professor of Visual and Media Arts (1982) Emerson College.

Dr. Andrade-Watkins, a historian and filmmaker, has published extensively on French- and Portuguese-speaking African cinema in leading academic journals and film publications including Framework, Research in African Literatures, International Journal of African History, Journal of Visual Anthropology, and The Independent. She is co-editor of Blackframes: Critical Perspectives on Black Independent Cinema. She was a 1995-1996 Fulbright Scholar in Cape Verde, where she conducted research on indigenous cinema in Cape Verde. With a 1997 grant from the American Philosophical Society, she researched colonial cinema in Lisbon. In the early 1990's, she hosted the US premiere of Flora Gomes' BLUE EYES OF YONTA at the Coolidge Corner Theater.

She is currently working on an award-winning "documemoire," Some Kind of Funny Porto Rican, about the Cape Verdean community in Providence, Rhode Island. Other documentaries she produced include The Spirit of Cape Verde, a half-hour documentary celebrating the bonds between New England, Cape Verde and President Aristides Periera's historical first visit to the United States in 1983. She was an Associate Producer on "Odyssey", a national PBS anthropology and archaeology documentary series, and Assistant to the Producer on Sankofa, an internationally acclaimed feature film on slavery by filmmaker Haile Gerima.

Claire Andrade-Watkins is President of SPIA Media Production, 'BRINGING THE AFRICANA DIASPORA TO LIFE'

Lina Fruzzetti, Brown University & Ákos Östör, Wesleyan University

Lina Fruzzetti, Brown
Social anthropology, kinship, politics, study of ritual and the construction of gender, development and political studies, race and ethnic relations, Islamic societies and notions of identity, ethnographic film; Feminist movement in Africa and Asia, study of ritual and kinship, construction of gender and identity, nationalism and post-colonial identity (India and Africa).

Ákos Östör, Wesleyan. Cultural anthropology, political economy, film and anthropology; South Asia, East Africa, Central Europe.

Lina Fruzzetti and Ákos Östör first met Mr. Khalfan while waiting for a delayed flight at Harare airport in 1995. Subsequently they met often when Fruzzetti and Östör spent a year teaching and carrying out anthropological and film work at the University of Dar es Salaam. Eventually, the three of them decided to make a film about Mr. Khalfan's life and work and invited Alfred Guzzetti to make the film with them. The filmmakers have previously collaborated on the award-winning film Seed and Earth (1996).

"Khalfan and Zanzibar" A film by Lina Fruzzetti, Alfred Guzzetti, & Akos Ostor.
"On syllabus or on film, anthropologist Fruzzetti places culture in the spotlight," article on Lina Fruzzetti in the George Street Journal.
"The orphaned girls of India," article on Lina Fruzzetti in the George Street Journal
"Anthropologist's award-winning film chronicles Indian village life," article on Lina Fruzzetti in the George Street Journal

Philip Rosen, Brown, Modern Culture and Media & English
Festival Co-Director

Philip Rosen began teaching African cinema at Brown in the late 1970's. He has contributed significantly to making MCM's African film archive one of the best in the country. Professor Rosen's areas of expertise include film theory and history, media, theories of culture and ideology, semiotic theory, theory and history.

Meadow Dibble-Dieng, Brown, French Studies (Ph.D. candidate)
Festival Co-Director

Meadow's research interests include French & Francophone literary journals, cultural politics, creative non-fiction, "La Francophonie" and African literature, visual art and cinema. She received her B.A. from Colby College ('95) in English, French and Fiction and was a Thomas J. Watson Fellow from '95-'96, for which she conducted 12-months of independent research in West Africa. She is author of the site Literature and Culture of Francophone Africa and the Diaspora original editor of Equinoxes and co-founder of the journal Orange light--based in Dakar, Senegal, which she edited from '95-'00.

Modou Dieng
Festival Advisor

Modou Dieng is a visual artist of Senegalese origin. He organized a series of free public screenings of African films in 2002 at the International Institute of Rhode Island, which served as the inspiration for this festival. Modou exhibits his artwork widely in the US and abroad.

Réda Bensmaïa, Brown, French Studies & Modern Culture and Media
Festival Advisor

Réda Bensmaïa teaches Francophone literature and film in Brown's Department of French Studies. His areas of expertise are 20th century literature and literary theory; Francophone studies; literature and film. He is author of The Barthes Effect, 1987; Alger ou la maladie de la mémoire, 1997 (novel); Experimental Nations, Or, the Invention of the Maghreb, 2003.

Elliott Colla, Brown, Comparative Literature
Festival Advisor

Elliott Colla teaches Modern Arabic and English literature in Brown's Department of Comparative Literature. His areas of expertise are the Arabic novel, travel literature, postcolonial theory and aesthetics.