Festival to promote African documentaries in Ghana

Accra, May 9, GNA - The First Pan-African Festival of Documentaries, a week-long programme that will screen documentaries featuring the everyday lives of people in African countries, will be held in Accra from 20-26 May.

The Festival of Documentaries will attract filmmakers, producers and actors from Ghana, Burkina Faso, Egypt, Senegal and the United States and feature films on the historical development in Africa, the colonial and post-colonial crisis, cultural and economic activities in addition to African hip-hop music.

Professor Awam Ampka, a lecturer on film making at the New York University, at a press conference on Tuesday, said documentaries, especially audio-visual materials, were better teachers of history than books.

"I would rather have library selves filled with documentaries than with textbooks," he said.

He announced the institution of a Student Film Festival that would involve students from the United States, Caribbean and the National Film and Television Institute (NAFTI).

Prof. Ampka said the programme would develop a curriculum that would bring communities in the US and Africa into contact and expressed the hope that it would open opportunities of interaction between the US and Ghana since it would be held annually in Ghana.

Ms. Lydie Diakhate, a Senegalese journalist, said the documentaries would help portray the positive things on the continent with an African voice rather than negative features identified with the continent on the international front.

Mr. Malik Sy, a Senegalese filmmaker, reiterated the need for more positive African documentaries and said Africa had a lot of beautiful things to show to the world. Among the documentaries to be screened is "Gift from Emmanuel" filmed in Ghana by an American film company with Oprah Winfery as the narrator. The documentary, which featured one Emmanuel, a disabled Ghanaian who advocated for the Disability Bill in Ghana, is reported to have attracted and gained much attention in the USA and would be shown the first time in Ghana during the festival.