10th edition CIFF – 10-14 April 2024

Footprints of Pan Africanism (2018 Feature Film)

Shirikiana AINA | USA, Ghana | 2017 | doc | color | DCP | 77′ | English | n.s.

Robert Lee was one of the black Americans who heeded Kwame Nkrumah’s call to return home. Not only to help build up Ghana, the first African state to liberate itself, but also to stimulate the liberation of the whole continent. A documentary that uses witnesses’ testimony to present the many historical threads of Pan-Africanism.

In 1957, Ghana was the first African country to become independent of its colonial rulers, in this case the British. Kwame Nkrumah, the first president of what in 1960 became the Republic of Ghana, called on Africans from all over the world to come to Ghana to help build the new nation. The most important aim was to “undo the damage caused by the slave trade” as filmmaker Shirikiana Aina expressed it in her documentary Footprints of Pan Africanism. Several people speak in Aina’s film about the reconstruction of Ghana and Nkrumah, who was deposed in 1966, offering room for their frequently gripping personal stories. These are often marked by racism, the emerging civil rights movement and what it’s like to be black and live elsewhere. For many, returning to Africa was like going home.

Aina’s documentary was produced by her husband, the director Haile Gerima (Teza, 2009).

Place: The Cinemas 3

Date: 13 April 2018

Time: 18:00

Duration: 1:05

Place: The Cinemas 3

Date: 14 April 2018

Time: 10:45

Duration: 1:05

Place: The Cinemas 3

Date: 15 April 2018

Time: 18:30

Duration: 1:05

Year in
Festival

2018

Director

Shirikiana AINA

Camera

Rick Butler

Country

USA
Ghana

Editor

Shirikiana Aina
Haile Gerima

Language

English

Length

77′

Music

Lafayette Gilchrist
Eric Kennedy
David White

Producer

Haile Gerima

Production Company

Negod Gwad Production

Sales

Mypheduh Films

Scenario

Shirikiana Aina

Sound Design

Jon K. Oh

Year of Production

2017

Shirikiana AINA (1955, Verenigde Staten) ontving haar BA Film van Howard University en haar MA Afrikaanse Film van UCLA in 1982. Datzelfde jaar richtte ze Mypheduh Films op, samen met haar man, de geprezen onafhankelijke filmmaker Haile Gerima (Teza). Het is een distributiemaatschappij voor onafhankelijke, Afrikaanse en Afrikaans-Amerikaanse films. Aina is ook medeoprichter van Negod Gwad Productions, een non-profit filmmaatschappij die ondersteuning biedt aan indie filmmakers. Aina is een onafhankelijke documentairemaker en producent, wiens werk zich concentreert op de Afrikaanse diaspora. Daarnaast doceerde ze scenario en filmproductie op Howard University.

 

Filmography

(all doc) Brick by Brick (1982, short), Through the Door of no Return (1997), Footprints of Pan Africanism (2017)