ACFNY RECOMMENDED | ACCRA POWER
In May 2017, the New York African Film Festival (NYAFF) returns to the Film Society of Lincoln Center (FSLC), Maysles Cinema, Lehman College, and Brooklyn Academy of Music’s BAM cinématek for its 24th edition. Across these venues, the festival will present a total of 25 feature-length films and 36 short films from 25 countries—celebrated African films from the continent and the diaspora. The festival takes on the theme, The Peoples’ Revolution, to illuminate a new wave of artists throughout Africa and its diaspora seeking reform and taking sociopolitical actions to do so.
These individuals increasingly exist where values of human rights, civic duty, and the democratic, unrestricted nature of technology intersect and become interdependent. Resulting intersections which correlate with artists’ everyday realities, are spaces where ideas of identity, culture, and notions of “home” are rewired and thus, function in ways markedly distinct from previous generations. Within these new arenas, validation is affirmed through self-representation, self-actualization, and importantly, through ascertaining their own voice within the larger world discourse.
For further information on the NYAFF click >>>here
Among others, this year’s edition of the NYAFF also hosts the US premiere of Austrian anthropologist turned filmmaker Sandra Krampelhuber’s documentary: Accra Power, which outlines creative and artistic strategies of young Ghanaians situated at the crossroads of tradition and various belief systems, high technological and economic growth, infrastructural deficits and current energy crisis.
Watch the trailer >>>here
In her third film Krampelhuber chooses the poet Poetra Asantewa, fashion DJ Steloo, gospel scientist Edward Ohemeng Oware, dancer Hadassah Asare, musician Wanlov (one half of Fokn Bois), visual and performance artist Serge Attukwei Clottey, storyteller Mary Yaa Konadu and boxer Abigail Quartey to be our guides around the greater Accra area in Ghana. Performances on front porches, in boxing gyms, art studios, and on live stages are interspersed with one-on-one interviews with the artists, in which power is examined: Spiritual power, electric power, physical power, mental power and Vim.
After the screening the directors of the film will be available for a Q&A.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Sandra Krampelhuber is an Austrian Cultural Anthropologist. She graduated from the University of Vienna in 2002. Since then she is interested in the various fields of cultural and artistic productions in African and African Diaspora countries. In 2006 she directed the music documentary QUEENS OF SOUND about females in the Jamaican music industry. The film was shown at film festivals worldwide. It was also in 2006 that she travelled to Dakar, Senegal for her first time and after many encounters with Senegalese artists and musicians over the years, she decided to portray this thriving scene in her film 100% Dakar. Recently she directed the documentary ACCRA POWER (2016, 49min, Austria/Ghana).
© Sandra Krampelhuber, 2016
VENUE
Film Society of Lincoln Center
165 W. 65th Street & 144 W. 65th Street, New York, NY 10023