AFRIQUE SUR SEINE Paulin Vieyra, Mamadou Sarr, France 1955, OV, 21 min
COME BACK, AFRICA Lionel Rogosin, South Africa/USA 1958, OV/EnS, 84 min
MAN NO RUN Claire Denis, France 1988, OV/GeS, 107 min
and archive material from Bissau, Cairo und Khartoum

In their impressionistic film AFRIQUE SUR SEINE, Paulin Vieyra and Mamadou Sarr depict the lives of African men and women in Paris during the 1950s. Where is Africa, in Africa, on the banks of the Seine, or in the Quartier Latin? The film formulates the viewpoint of a generation of artists and students that set out to follow the traces of a trans-African culture and future in the French capital. ARIQUE SUR SEINE marks the beginning of one history of film – the film is considered the first independent work of African cinema. In 1957 the "Decret Laval" was in force, which forbade Africans and independent filmmakers from shooting in the French colonies. Which is one reason why the first film shot by Africans was made in Paris. This film was realized under the sponsorship of the Comité du Film Ethnographique du Musée de l'Homme (CFE) in Paris.

Lionel Rogosin, an US-American director, filmed COME BACK, AFRICA in the late 1950s in Johannesburg. The result was a film that is exemplary in its depiction of the black urban experience under Apartheid. The film tells the story of Zachariah Mgabi who leaves his rural home to find work in Johannesburg. As the film progresses Zachariah moves from job to job, working in the mines, as a domestic worker and at a car garage. In violation of apartheid’s racial pass laws, he is arrested by the police. Once out of prison, he finds out that his wife has been murdered.

The documentary MAN NO RUN accompanies the band Les Têtes brûlées from Cameroon on their first tour of France. The band plays traditional Bikutsi music in a wild, fast, punk-rock variant with electric guitars. The five musicians perform with shaven heads, white body paint and colorful rucksacks. The film shows gripping concerts with an audience going wild, but also the boredom between performances, daily routines, dreary highways, and the confrontation with the foreign, cold French environment, which leads to droll scenes.

Event date: November 22, 2013