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Last Updated: Jul 30th, 2008 - 20:33:44 |
New York’s African Diaspora Film Festival keeps marking milestones.
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| Diarah N’Daw-Spech and Reinaldo Barroso-Spech, directors of the African Diaspora Film Festival. |
Last year, the festival celebrated 15 years of presenting movies from the African Diaspora. This year, it celebrates five years of its satellite festival in Curaçao, which is being held through July 1.
Recently, I spoke with the festival’s two directors, the husband-wife team of Reinaldo Barroso-Spech and Diarah N’Daw-Spech, about the history of their festival on the Caribbean island and their main festival in New York City. Over the years, their ambitions have not withered away and there has been an opening up of new, unforeseen opportunities.
The festival’s connection with Curaçao began with producer Norman DePalm, who is from that region. He recently established a movie theater there. Several years before the opening of his movie theater, he presented his films at the African Diaspora Film Festival. Norman’s films tackled racial issues in a manner that went outside the societal norms of the island. The relationship between the Depalm, Barroso-Spech and N’Daw-Spech grew and now the theater owner hosts their films for the festival. In addition to organizing the African Diaspora Film Festival, the couple owns the film distribution Artmattan Productions. It is through this company that films are provided to Curacao. “When we leave, the theater does not screen [these kinds of independent films],” N’Daw-Spech said. “Maybe some African American block blusters.”
Curaçao’s film industry is miniscule compared to that of the United States but the cinematographic representation of the global Black experience is the goal the festival. In organizing it, the couple said that they “wanted to give something back” to their adopted community of New York City, which was in need of cultural organization that reflects the diversity of the Black community through cinema. Before the early 1990s, New York City did not hold any film festivals that devoted considerable attention to Black independent films.
September 11, 2001 and the events thereafter have sparked at least three major cultural events that focus on the ability of the arts to foster cross-cultural communication: The International Literary Festival, PEN World Voices and the Tribeca Film Festival. In general, New York has grown as a site that shows how cultural and artistic gatherings can change social and political discourse. Almost a decade before these events, a few individuals desired to diversify New York’s cultural landscape by presenting foreign language Black films with the hope of enriching the Anglophone media circuit. These Black film festivals predate the accessibility of the Internet and, nevertheless, these festivals are not outdated by the proliferation of images and information.
Both Barroso-Spech and N’Daw-Spech chuckle as they make a serious and unfortunate observation: “now Brazilians from Brazil contract us to purchase independent Brazilian films.” After speaking to these festival organizers, I began to realize that their existence questions the sovereignty of the nation-state, in any given location. As filmmakers grow frustrated with the country’s distribution avenues, they are starting to find better distribution networks abroad which can in turn open up markets for the artists. As these festivals strengthen in audience numbers and establish mini-festivals throughout the country, their presence can indicate the stratification between a communal appreciation for the arts and a national production of stories. Such festivals and production companies routinely challenge the ability for national infrastructures to sincerely project communal narratives and push those organizations to uphold their commitment to the national and local community.
Black independent film festivals filled the gap of what wasn’t happening. The void and the subsequent hunger links this festival with other festivals in New York and Los Angeles. Their main objective has been to disprove the notions that independent Black films do not have an audience, lack artistic merit or that these films and filmmakers do not exist. Ayuku Babu, the director of the Pan-African Film Festival in Los Angeles, highlights the fact that his festival serves as a depository for the lessons of the Civil Rights Movement, The Black Power Movement and the Black Arts Movement. On the other hand, in New York, a few individuals who immigrated to the United States decided to launch film festivals that aim to further diversify images of Black people. The insider-outsider reality of festival organizers in New York (Barroso-Spech and N’Daw-Spech are from Cuba and Paris, respectively, and Mahen Bonetti was born in Sierra Leone but raised in the United States) contributes to their commitment to change the existing artistic space for Black films and images nationally and the local context of New York City. For Babu, Mahen Bonneti of the African Film Festival and Barroso-Spech and N’Daw-Spech, directing a film festival has been a learning process. Throughout the years, the directors have cultivated a guarded humility that resists humiliation and subsequent resignation.
In New York, the film festival directors’ stories speak about immigration and the politics of belonging, which is that delicate balance between being nostalgic and being appreciative of a new environment. From what I observed, the directors’ nostalgia does not harbor feelings of remorse or disenchantment but rather it has sustained their drive to keep making valuable contributions to this country. . In the case of the African Diaspora Film Festival, N’Daw-Spech’s Parisian upbringing and Barroso-Spech’s Cuban heritage foregrounds their work. As Barroso-Spech eloquently describes his and his wife’s migration history, he walks a delicate balance. He at once resists a self-effacing rhetoric of assimilation and acknowledges that he and his wife have relocated and established themselves in this country. For him, there is no value in being an outsider; instead, he emphasizes with care the importance of sharing knowledge that stems from having lived elsewhere.
“We are not people who were born in this country, which is not positive or negative,” he said. “ It is just a fact. When you are not born here, you are exposed to films from in a different perspective. We were born in two countries that both had a very strong cinematographic movement. To that effect, we were people who were interested in films in general, intelligent films in particular and international cinema that was another particular element that was part of who were are…this love for films, love for diversity, for a broader vision of what it means to be Black. The inclination to look for films was simple: we were going to look for films that reflect and depict stories that are close to us.”
After 15 years, N’Daw-Spech no longer works full-time as the budget manager at Columbia University Teacher’s College; she has transitioned into a part-time position and devotes more of her efforts to the festival, the distribution company and their partnerships with political advocacy groups and artistic or cultural organizations. Years ago, their first intention was to build a theater. N’Daw-Spech would survey independent filmgoers as they would exit theaters such as the Quad Cinema in lower Manhattan in attempt to understand these viewers’ taste in films and their habits. The goal of establishing a movie theater proved to be too grand of a task would require an ample amount of social and economic capital. Establishing a film festival proved to be the more tangible, although still challenging, alternative. You could say that the past aspirations of Barroso-Spech and N’Daw-Spech have been reincarnated through Depalm who owns a movie theater in Curacao. Their resilience is testimony to the notion that momentary setbacks do not equate with failure.
Black Film Festivals Summer Events:
African Diaspora Film Festival in Curaço
Tuesday June 24- Tuesday July 1, 2008
For more information on ADFF and its satellite festivals go to www.nyadff.org
Pan African Film Festival in Atlanta July 18-27, 2008
http://www.nbaf.org/events/index.cfm?Fuseaction=Film
African Film Festival Summer 2008 Central Park Screenings
www.africanfilmny.org
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