TAKE ONE Awards 2012
TAKE ONE writers have voted on Best Feature, Best Documentary, Best Short and Best Festival for 2012 as well as some one-off awards from individual writers. Cover image by Harry Hunt.
La Pirogue
An authentic depiction of a tragic journey, LA PIROGUE sets the bar high for Ang Lee’s upcoming LIFE OF PI adaptation, writes Joe DeVine.
CAFF Closing Event: Nab’Ubomi Short Films
Nab’Ubomi meaning ‘This is Life’ is a South African youth project that goes into schools and helps teach secondary students about media production and development through a short film competition. The project has been running for five years and this programme in the Cambridge African Film Festival only represents a small amount of what has [...]
Notes on African Cinema
African film, and its filmmakers and producers, is inevitably much like the countries that fill the large continent: a vast array of personalities, humour, issues, injustices, histories that ultimately represent a variety of storytelling methods. It is one of the few film industries – along with perhaps, to a lesser extent, Asian cinema – where a number [...]
Nairobi Half Life
A universal tale of aspiration in the face of adversity is given fresh impetus and local nuances in Tosh Gitonga’s drama – the opening film of Film Africa and CAFF2012, writes Jim Ross
Take One Awards 2011
Take One’s writers decide upon the best Feature, Documentary, Short and (non-Cambridge) Festival from their experiences on the festival circuit in calendar year 2011.
Simon Bright Q&A
Director of ROBERT MUGABE…WHAT HAPPENED?, Simon Bright, talks about his life and career with Take One’s Mike Boyd in front of a live audience
Robert Mugabe… What Happened?
‘What can you do to a hero, or to a father, who has gone wayward? Can you discipline your father?’ Mike Boyd reviews this fascinating, frustrated portrait of Mugabe as a man, which is also an important history of the country as a whole.
The closing of CAFF, Mwansa The Great and interview with director Rungano Nyoni
The Cambridge African Film Festival drew to a close last week, summing up the extraordinary work pouring out of Africa with a set of shorts from various countries on the continent (see www.cambridgeafricanfilmfestival.org.uk for more information). The last of these was MWANSA THE GREAT – a wonderfully crowd-pleasing adventure into the heart and mind of [...]
Dreams of Elbidi (Ndoto Za Elbidi)
Rosy Hunt attended DREAMS OF ELBIDI, a unique fusion of community theatre and traditional cinema. It offers not only a dramatisation of Kenyan ghetto life, but a way to entertain its African audience while educating them about HIV and AIDS. Also featured: transcript from the Q&A with Kamau wa Ndung’u.
Notre Étrangère (The Place In Between)
Jim Ross reviews NOTRE ÉTRANGÈRE, an excellent but heartbreaking film screening at the Cambridge African Film Festival on Monday November 7th
The Cambridge African Film Festival Preview
Mike Boyd sets out the highlights and previews the 10th Cambridge African Film Festival, which has just begun at the Arts Picturehouse
Koundi And The National Thursday
The villagers of Koundi in Cameroon have created their own communally cultivated cacao plantation as a way of alleviating their poverty independently. Turning away from typical NGO filmmaking, Ariane Atodji’s debut is a strong statement that Africa exists outside of the narrow, stereotypical lens of poverty, conflict and famine so often used to invoke it.
African Cinema and the London Film Festival
Mike Boyd was at the London Film Festival last week to take in some African cinema ahead of the Cambridge African Film Festival