September 26, 2011
African camera: new trends in African cinema
A publication arises from the collaboration between Festival del Cinema Africano di Verona and lettera27: Camera Africa: Classici, noir e Nollywood e la nuova generazione del cinema delle Afriche (African Camera: classics, noir, Nollywood, and the new generation in cinema from African countries).The book is published by Cierre Edizioni, in the series Sequenze, and edited by Vanessa Lanari, in collaboration with Fabrizio Colombo and Stefano Gaiga. The project is inspired by an important anniversary, as 2010 marked the thirtieth year of the Festival del Cinema Africano di Verona. The festival has a well-established connection with the foundation thanks to a number of joint projects and lettera27’s passion for African cinema, which it has brought alive in various projects and events, most importantly WikiAfrica Cinema.

For its launch, Camera Africa will be touring many Italian cities, starting on 27th September, with a presentation by the editors and Professor Farah Polato, from the University of Padua, at the ninth edition of Ottobre Africano in Parma. On 9th October at 6.30pm the editors will be in Rome, at the Griot bookshop, with the participation of Dagmawi Yimer, director of the documentary Soltanto il Mare; and on 15th October at 6pm, at the Centro Studi Donati in Bologna, Anna Maria Gallone, Vanessa Lanari and Fabrizio Colombo present the book and discuss African cinema, from the classics to the new generations.

The book reconstructs the rich and heterogeneous world of contemporary African cinematographies, and focuses on some of its key features in recent years. As well as providing a snapshot of the current situation, these phenomena, new and in progress, give us a glimpse of future trajectories, and help predict the art and industry of African film. “The new distribution avenues have supported, in some countries, the development of a full-blown film industry and star system, starting with the Nollywood phenomenon and popular cinema” - writes the editor Vanessa Lanari, in the introduction to the book – alongside “the use of new genres and new pathways that have been traced, the increasing success of African women filmmakers, spilling outside African borders, not to forget the importance of diaspora cinematography, including recent Italian productions.”

These are the themes explored thanks to the contributions of Tahar Chikhaoui, Baba Diop, Guido Convents and Annamaria Gallone, who have been part of the history of the Verona Festival since 1981, alongside Meriam Azizi, Savrina Chinien, Alessandro Jedlowsky and Farah Polato, talented new critics and researchers.

The second part of the book presents a comparison of contemporary and traditional film, presenting the classics through the eyes of five directors. Each of them chose one film from the African tradition, and through it they told not only the story of that film in their country, but also their memories as viewers and the influences these films had on their work.

The Festival del Cinema Africano di Verona contributes to WikiAfrica and takes part in the lettera27 project Share Your Knowledge. To encourage the sharing of knowledge on African and Diaspora films, to give African film festivals, actors and directors an international profile, and to promote the creation of a distribution system based on copyleft, the film descriptions and the director's portraits of the book are released under the open licence Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike CC-BY-SA and contribute to the project WikiAfrica Cinema.

Wikipedia entries contain a brief synopsis of the film, the production characteristics, cast and credits, some anecdotes and details, bibliography and external links where to find primary sources, that have been used to create entries. All fans and experts in African cinema are encouraged to enrich the voices, to translate and create new entries.